But it doesn't get cold... why do you need insulation?
/s
(Yes, I realize that northern California can be snow-bound in the higher elevations)
Seriously though, I watch a few builders on YouTube, and the amount of insulation they put on spec homes is the minimal amount they can get away with. A shame, considering how you can get a home well enough insulated that you could heat it in a Canadian winter with a hair dryer.
Low 30s in Palo Alto and Menlo Park where I live. Cold enough to have frost on windshields or grass early in the morning. Biggest change for California weather was the delta between day and night!
But surely, if you're thinking of buying house A or B, the actual monthly costs should be a very big part of the decision, and affect the price you can pay for each house (size of mortgage payment).
Say, after salary, taxes, food you have 1000 euros per month that you can spend. There are two houses, where in one, you can spend 500 on mortgage and 500 on energy bills, and in the other, you can spend 700 on mortgage and 300 on energy bills.
But if you just buy the house that has 500 on mortgage because "it's cheaper", it's not actually cheaper in total.
This should also interest banks that give people mortgages.
Also, if you rent that house out, if the energy cost is directly part of the rent, the house with the higher energy cost has a higher rent, hence it's less attractive. Again, market forces. So in reality, you can get more profit out of the house that has the lower energy cost, because in reality, the cost is not be passed directly to the renters.
Well when you balance the new demand with energy efficiency for a long time...
The real problem is that the demand models did not account for a worsening climate at the pace that it is encountering record hot days. Though for that matter, almost nobody accounted for that, so it's hard to blame the grid planners too much.
Because that is (possibly) flexible demand that might have the ability to be shifted to low demand periods to prioritize cooling (or in general, higher priority loads).
When you're at the edge you can ask for anything - and electric cars is an easy one to describe.
You could also ask people to reduce electric range cooking, electric dryer usage, etc, but that can be harder to describe and offer more inconvenience.
Also, most people with an electric car probably have another mode of transportation they can switch to.
Solar generation in CA was peaking at ~12GW yesterday [1] (Control-F "Origin of electricity in the last 24 hours"), with natural gas peaking a bit more than that at ~16GW-20GW. The state can replace ~75% of natural gas fired generation if it covers its canals with solar [2] [3]. Yes, there is a supply shortage; California simply isn't creating robust enough incentives/reducing paperwork to increase deployment velocity (there is roughly 100GW of renewable generation in CAISOs interconnect queue [4]). Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico/Baja are also next door, and that solar potential is significant [5]. The sun is shining when AC loads are at their max.
TLDR Build more renewables, transmission, and battery storage; shift flexible loads to when renewable power is generating.
You rely on non solar generation sources when the sun is down, and shift flexible loads to solar generating periods with market pricing. Remaining loads can be served by nuclear, hydro, wind, and battery.
If the heat is high enough, A/C runs all night, and if the amount of peaking power plants is down, then they could lose enough capacity overnight to make it still a problem.
Well then its a good thing most of the energy crunch time is while the sun is shining. In big states like California and Texas the difference between day and night usage can be >20+GW. Even more so when there is a heat wave.
Forget building new capacity, CA told PG&E to limit Diablo Canyon output to meet its internal goal of 'producing 50% of its electricity from qualified renewable energy sources by 2030'
Depends on the dust and sand. The upkeep of solar facilities in deserts can cost more (compared to rooftop/agricultural solar installations) due to maintenance requirements.
It takes less energy to cool down an interior space by one degree than heat it by one degree. You don't see active water crises in Arizona or California like you have in Jackson, Mississippi.
And they want to close down their remaining nuclear plants? Wow. I guess with desertification it would be a stretch to find an ample source of cooling water. Does this mean they're planning their base loads on natural gas then?
Or are they holding out for SMEs that don't need large volumes of water?
The Palo Verde nuclear plant is the largest in the US and isn't near a body of water. According to Wikipedia, "The power plant evaporates the water from the treated sewage from several nearby cities and towns to provide the cooling of the steam that it produces." Wonder if that could work for the drier parts of California.
can anyone explain to me why cooling water is an issue for nuke plants? In areas with less water, can’t a coolant fluid be used with a compressor and fans powered by the reactor to cool the system down?
It would reduce energy yields but my intuition says the energy cost for cooling would be negligible compared to production.
Also, can’t coastal water be used for plants near oceans?
A large nuclear power plant may use up to 1 billion gallons of water a day and, for this reason, they are often built next to rivers, lakes or oceans to utilise the bodies of water. The water is drawn from these sources and heated to create steam to power the turbine. It then condenses and can be reused in the power generation process. However, it is eventually pumped back into the body of water it originated from, albeit at very high temperatures. This can increase the temperature of the natural water source by up to 30 degrees, posing risks to the aqua life.
Coastal water works great. Once through cooling from Diablo only kills 800 lbs of adult fish per year. Yes it sucks in fish eggs but the way the anti-nuclear industry phrases it is "it kills 1.5 billion fish in early stages of life" lol. A single tuna fish can make 5 million eggs per year.
Away from the coast you can do dry cooling with almost no water, going straight to air. It's just more expensive so it's not done often.
You could build water-cooled systems with extra capacity, so that when the water in the river gets warm in the hot summer months, it would not cause problems for the for the cooling system. But it's more expensive than a capacity that is designed to be just-so.
It was never closing down early, it was just ending its life at the end of its license.
A long time ago, once-through water cooling systems were banned in new generation, due to damage to water ecosystems. Retrofitting the cooling system was deemed to be in the 2010s, and other resources were planned to replace Diablo Canyon.
Since then, heat waves have gotten far far worse due to climate change, and climate change was not taken into account during the planning.
Since utility planning is typically at least five years lead time, there has been some adjustment, but not complete adjustment to the new reality we are facing.
California also suffered the disaster of the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak, which accelerated the shift away from natural gas generation.
It's unlikely that California will ever install SMRs, as they are far too away from deployment to be able to help with any problems. California needs new generation now, not in 2035.
Advanced geothermal is being deployed here, and in general I think geothermal has far far more potential on the future grid than SMRs.
Diablo Canyon can easily work for another 20 years, at least. Nuclear plants around the country have been getting license extensions. It makes 10% of the state's electricity, and nuclear fission is a zero-carbon process.
I'm glad they fought back against the anti-nuclear industry trying to close it prematurely. Now they should extend it 20 more years.
No they should build two new reactors on site and eventually retire old and inefficient hardware.
The site is toxic anyway - locals dont mind it in 'their back yard', infrastructure is there, skilled workers are there, everything is there. Every existing nuclear site in the world should be thinking about sticking another couple of reactors on site!
It's not that toxic. I was just there a few months ago, hiking along the water in the Point Buchon Trail. It was beautiful, with wildlife everywhere. Pure unadulterated coastline teeming with life. At the very end you can catch a glimpse of the nuclear plant
In my hometown we had an experimental nuclear plant powering my childhood. It shut down in the 1990s and today is total greenfield. Sadly, now my hometown is almost entirely fossil fueled.
DECON takes at least 7 years, SAFSTOR 50+ years. 50% of the decommionings in the US are the slow kind.
If you are going for the quick kind, you have to take everything off site somewhere and stick it in a hole in the ground (or probably store it on another nuclear plant site) - and then that hole in the ground is radioactive.
Its likely when they decommission Diablo Canyon, they will turn off the power and post a guard at the gate for 50 years and not touch anything.
Building new large reactors is a terrible idea. All the data shows that large reactors are obsolete, too difficult to build in modern economies, and without a good design to build. France's EPR has pretty much failed, and good luck finding any US utility foolish enough to try an AP1000.
I don't understand people's attachment to nuclear. We have far better tech now.
The large transmission lines at DC are incredibly valuable, however. There should be 4-5GW of floating offshore wind built there, and 10-100GWh of batteries at the old DC site.
Per unit of fuel it produces the most energy of any commercially available fuel source by a tremendously large margin. It produces extremely little waste compared to any commercially available fuel source. And the waste it does produce is, again by far, the cleanest and safest waste to manage.
Fusion is probably the only energy source that would, theoretically, provide better returns but is likely still decades away from commercial availability.
Both, really. Normalize first with the ambient temperature and then run the AC to sub ambient down towards the 60s.
AC efficiency increases as temperature decreases.
You would have to deal with the fact that your house is now frigidly cold. Also, I can’t remember the last house I lived in California that had decent insulation - so that’s a major assumption.
How well insulated are California houses built before, say, 1990?
I live up north now where insulation is a given, but when I lived in Louisiana, the houses were made from sticks. High ceilings, but no insulation anywhere.
"Energy demand for climate control was analyzed for Miami (the warmest large metropolitan area in the US) and Minneapolis (the coldest large metropolitan area). ... The results indicate that climate control in Minneapolis is about 3.5 times as energy demanding as in Miami."
I don't know where that guy lived in Louisiana, but I currently live there and insulation is a thing. Weather-proofing is a thing. However, there is very little you can do that will last long against 6 foot water and sustained 100mph winds.
I was in NOLA. Might have just been the age of places I lived, but walls and roof were substantially thinner than I'm accustomed to and bottom floor had open-air crawl spaces underneath (necessitating dripping faucets so pipes don't freeze).
If people die, and there were super easy checks to kee power from tripping off that had been reported on and ignored, sure, I'll be mad as hell.
I'm still incredibly mad that PG&E's grid mismanagement has caused massive fires and killed so many people. Still mad as hell about that gas line explosion that killed people and took out homes.
So unless you have a particular fix or action to propose that comes from partisan politics, there's not much point into turning this into a partisan politics battle.
It wasn't liberals either. We were largely sad and provided support where we could to the citizens. We were also angry at the senators and other Texas officials who brought that situation about.
I (I'll even go so far to say that a vast majority of liberal leaning folks) don't rejoice in other's misery.
The common scene I see is that the majority of <insert ideologically identifying term> don’t rejoice in other’s misery but rather do rejoice in pointing out how much those others deserve it.
FWIW, I don't believe that's actually a commonly held belief. I believe that's <insert ideologically identifying term> leadership's dogma created to keep the other group(s), well, other. To prevent their followers from reaching out and looking for common ground.
This is a comforting thought for people who adhere to a certain group’s dogma but do not want to take responsibility for that group’s actions. It’s like how some people “love Russians” but “hate Putin.” At a certain point your participation in a group signals your acceptance of the leadership’s dogma.
PG&E is criticized in these cases by pretty much everybody, liberal and conservative. And rightfully so, especially since they also have the distinction of starting so many forest fires.
The partisan debate is related to green energy. By and large it's insufficient for now. The very same progressives who slam coal power also slam one of the greatest forms of green energy - nuclear. Solar efficiency is only ~17%, wind is 35% but has environmental hazards associated with it. Nuclear is 92%, coal is about 80%.
So it's rather comedic to see the paragon of progressive virtue (signaling) suddenly suffering grid failure. Click through a few of these:
PG&E is a notable exception. However, PG&E is a mismanaged dumpster fire. There are costs to being the "leader in renewable energies" and this is one of them. Unfortunately for us normal people we have to suffer because of this virtue signaling and it comes at times like this in absurd heat waves going through the west. The problem with California in general is everything is done in a knee jerk fashion. There are right ways and wrong ways to roll out new energy programs and by fiat ruling to the rip the bandaid is how you get a situation that will kill people. This is an actual notable benefit of conservatism (the principle, not the people). You may be sometimes decades behind the latest and greatest but you don't find yourself in a heat wave without enough power, either.
This is not a critique based on data or reality, it's vague smears.
California's grid problems are not from "green energy" and it's frankly ridiculous to even say something like that. California's grid problems are from not planning for massive generation increases to match an unprecedented heat wave.
It's not from natural gas plants not being properly weatherized, it's not because "green energy" can't do something, it's 100% from not building enough generation.
Politics is too often a way to turn off our brains and avoid critical thinking. And in this case, as it is also in evaluating Texas's failure, partisan politics and "green energy" only obscures truth rather than revealing truth.
Replying again as I just came across this article: Texas's ERCOT issued nearly identical guidance as CAISO's guidance we are talking about here, and there was no outcry
There's a double standard here, and Texas does not get criticized where California does:
A lot of people will see this as a pure failure, but this is the system at work. Yes, there are improvements that can be made, but my understanding from reading this is they are handling it. This is part of the process, and it's the exception. This is part of the capacity planning, basically.
I guess I would equate it to getting DDoS'ed. You might declare an "emergency" but put into practice plans you had for when this happened. It's the exception, not the rule. It's an "emergency" but it's planned for.
Would it be great if this didn't happen? Sure. But that there clearly are plans in place when it happens is a good sign. It's much better than if nothing was done. You'd still have the emergency, but with no clear plan of action.
A well run state would just not have this problem. It's all caused by bad policy. I would prefer some learning from mistakes and fixing bad policy over being forced to leave the State.
From an outsider's perspective this appears to be a systemic failure. Maybe because California is a political whipping post, but they seem to be in the news a lot with power disruptions. Is this just a perception and not reality? I live in Nebraska with high summer temperatures and don't remember there being an emergency declared.
Could you elaborate on the differences? Nebraska might only have 2 million people to power but that also means they only have 2 million people's worth of income taxes to manage the infrastructure. Does power infrastructure and generation become exponentially harder to scale or is it linear? (I'm genuinely curious)
Nebraska gets half it's electricity from coal, so it's basically in a continual, decades long emergency, they just don't care.
Meanwhile, in California, you can't do certain things, like run a ship engine for power, most of the time because it causes unnecessary pollution that affects human health, but when this kind of emergency is declared, they relax those rules for a short period.
And to be completely clear, those regulations make sense because the Ports of Long Beach and LA are on the edge of the second-largest metro area in the country. No need to burn bunker fuel in a massive population center except in an emergency.
I don't know much about California's energy policies, but it's worth noting that California has by far the largest population in the US (~39 million vs. ~29 million for Texas, the next largest), comprising nearly 12% of the US population. It's also the third-largest in terms of area. You'd expect them to have more problems than a state with a tenth of the population regardless of policy.
Other large states have also had power problems. Texas (where I live) nearly had to shut down its entire grid due to a hard freeze last year and we've been getting regular requests from the state's grid management organization to limit power consumption on hot days. But our climate change problems tend more towards droughts and hurricanes, which don't affect the statewide power grid very much.
I posted a reply to another comment below, but I'm curious how the population difference impacts power generation. Is power more expensive to produce or supply based on your population? Does the power infrastructure not scale effectively to the demand? Nebraska having 2 million people while also requiring a wide land coverage seems like a harder problem to solve. You can't plop a power plant down for a small town easily and if you move the energy across a long distance you now have to cover the cost of servicing the infrastructure for a small population. If anything, shouldn't overhead be cheaper the higher the population density? I'm genuinely curious since this isn't my area of expertise.
I'm only an electronics engineer, so I'm afraid I can't give you a good answer on that. Generation might be cheaper at scale, but I don't think distribution necessarily is. I don't have time to do a lot of research, but I did find some interesting differences between California and Nebraska:
* California imports about 25-30% of its electricity while Nebraska exports over 15%[1].
* California produces about 5 times as much electricity as Nebraska[2], with about 8 times the peak generating capacity[3][4].
* All of Nebraska's electric utilities are publicly owned[3].
* California relies more on hydroelectric power, which is more vulnerable to climate change[5].
I think this isn’t a very helpful perspective. Yes you can be mad, yell and blame or whatever. But if policymakers are transparent about incidents and root causes and follow up on failures, thats the culture I would prefer rather than getting mad and firing/scapegoating people.
The point is that there hasn't been a failure. The fact that there is a response and planning happening before a grid failure noticably affecting people suggests the policies and plans are working.
Capacity has been flat for the last decade and California has had a reputation for an unreliable power grid as long as I've followed US news. You're dreaming, mate.
I don’t remember blackouts in my country since 90s. It seems that parts of US could be considered worst that third-world country with some aspects.
From my old experience I could suggest buying diesel generator and have enough supply of diesel fuel to run it for a few days at least. Also few tonnes of coal, but that’s for cold climate.
He's clearly laid out the aspects he's talking about, too. If availability of electricity is something you prioritize, then the failure in that regard is significant. If you don't prioritize that, then recognize that you're probably in the minority.
Yeah, having lived in third world and now living in California, I can tell this is BS. Third world electricity is having power cuts daily in small towns(not less populated, by the way), and probably weekly in cities. I rarely had a power cut in California in the last decade. If it did, it was less than 15 minutes in all.
Disagree. There’s lots of natural gas generation in the state. The issue is large weather events that is spiking demand much greater than the historical forecast.
More EVs and V2G would go a long way to stabilize the grid.
V2G seems, as a practical matter, to be extremely dependent on a complex system of intermediaries because no one wants to try having vehicles negotiate directly with the grid operator. I don’t know whether this is likely to work well in the near future.
But there’s evidently not enough natgas generation, otherwise we wouldn’t have this issue. There’s not enough because Cali chose not to buy enough (of natgas or something else).
The forecasting argument doesn’t hold water for me - California is the state trumpeting about global warming the longest; if this is because of GW and their own projections didn’t consider it, well…
It's not producing enough power, so it's not "enough".
Like if I gave you an ounce of ice cream, and an ounce of steak, and you complain about not having enough food, I don't get to say "but it's 50% steak, that's more than enough".
The decades long push for "renewable" energy at all costs has made any consideration of investing in long term base load generation unpalatable in CA - which is why, as others have pointed out, CA hasn't invested in base load generation since the early 2000s.
It's utter madness. This is 100% a problem of failed policy, zero planning and living in a fantasy world detached from reality.
Ditto in the UK. Successive governments have run down infrastructure and power generation alike, with no thought as to how the UK is going to get enough power in the near future. The outgoing Idiot In Charge has just signed off on a new nuclear power plant but it'll take 10 years to build. In the meantime we're wondering if we could reopen some coal mines, and restart some of the coal-fired power plants that have been mothballed.
California is a great example of the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
At some point, we are going to realize "green" non nuclear energy doesn't work.
We need nuclear.
Good intentions doesn't make a good government. California politicians seem to have a lot of good intentions on homelessness, jail reform, education, healthcare, but the reality is just an awful hell zone.
It can solve the problem: that doesn't mean there aren't other potential issues that need to be handled correctly. Take France for instance - it's currently becoming a net importer of electricity due to many (~60%) of its Nuclear reactors being offline for maintenance.
It's the only energy source that can run 24/7 on a tiny land footprint without emitting carbon or being overly dependent on local weather.
The one nuclear plant in California makes 10% of the entire states electricity. And last night the state assembly voted 31/1 to not prematurely shut it down as planned.
Climate change and the 8 million people who die per year from fossil and renewable biofuel combustion products (WHO numbers) are far more concerning. Nuclear solves wayyy more problems than it causes.
Oh and nuclear fission used in breeder reactors is just as renewable as the fusion fuel in the sun that powers wind/solar/hydro/bio. We can make 100% of the world's primary energy for 4 billion years with nuclear before running out of fuel.
It was interesting to see (thanks, Europe) how nuclear power plants are still somewhat susceptible to global climate change, since they require vast amounts of water below a certain temperature to run.
Those are administrative limits set before climate change to help protect fish. You can solve the problem by keeping fish farther away from the outlets.
Nuclear plants can also be cooled with nearly zero water usage, using dry cooling (dump heat straight to air basically with air radiators). This is more expensive, but may make sense as climate change kicks in. It's perfectly doable and safe.
So you're with more words saying - lets take the by far most expensive energy source and make it more expensive?
Today creating hydrogen from solar and burning it in a turbine is competitive with new built nuclear. Not that anyone suggests it for anything else than emergencies, since the round trip efficiency cost would be ludicrous.
Markets are currently broken. People are looking at low LCOE for gas, wind, and solar without it having any capability to consider factors like greenhouse gas emissions (for gas), cost of capacity overbuilds and storage needed for intermittency at scale (for wind/solar), increased transmission lines (for dispersed sources, again wind/solar).
Yet everyone just says "ok nuclear is the most expensive and always will be no matter what"
Add in a carbon fee and a low-carbon capacity market and all of a sudden nuclear would be the cheapest.
Markets are human constructs that are currently woefully messed up and leading us in dangerous directions.
Capacity over build is already factored into LCOE for renewables, right there in the definition.
Transmission lines are not but comparing how many HVDC lines you can get for the difference between renewables and a single nuclear reactor is laughable. This is not even mentioning the cost that has gone into building the current grid in a hub and spoke model around big centralized producers.
Not that we need to throw it away, but it is worth mentioning when talking nuclear. Especially new builds.
Power 2 X makes storage solved at costs lower or in line to nuclear. Not that anyone would accept those costs.
The real interesting research which is currently happening is around grid forming inverts. Being able create a country wide grid without any synchronous producers or coupling.
> Capacity over build is already factored into LCOE for renewables, right there in the definition.
The way people argue about it, no it absolutely not. CAISO generates about 25,000 MWd in a day. If you just use LCOE you would say, ok let's take the LCOE in $/MWh, convert to $/MWd and multiply them for each energy source. Wow look how cheap 100% wind and solar are!
But oops they totally missed the fact that oops in Winter they have to build at least 4x capacity to fill up the shockingly large amount of chemical batteries (hundreds of skyscrapers full) and wires during the windy/sunny periods, and then rebuild all of this stuff every 25 years. Now it looks very expensive and crazy.
The 92% capacity factor nuclear plant running for 80 years is looking good.
Wind and solar alone are the cheapest forms of energy as tents are the cheapest form of housing.
Many studies suggest that a good mixture of hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar are the ideal. Let's not rule out nuclear due to current market quirks.
That is 24 giga watt hours from a kg or uranium. The article says California is set to "top 48 gigawatts" on some days. If it stayed at peak usage all year 48 * 24 * 365 / 24 = 17,520 kg of uranium for constant peak California consumption.
That seems like a lot until you think about how much oil it saves
Interesting thought experiment - for the same capacity, we’d need 2300 sq.mi of photovoltaic gross land[1], assuming we need to way overbuild let’s make that 3x (6900 sq. mi). That’s equivalent to ~15% of Mojave desert being covered in solar and not accounting for battery storage needed.
That same capacity would require 26 Diablo canyon equivalent stations or only 30.5 sq.mi. [2]
Of course, Greater Los Angeles area itself is 33,954 sq.mi, so if we assume 10% of that are roofs, parking lots and other structures that can be covered with a solar panel setup somehow (big assumption, but this is a thought experiment after all), we’d have close to 1/2 of the total already covered. Add other populated areas in CA and things don’t look so outlandish with some combination of Nuclear/storage/solar.
The big question is whether we have the social cohesion to pull this off or not. The train from LA to SF mess has me worried here…
Great that the alternative is renewables then. Arguing against fossil fuels is a strawman.
You also have to consider what you need to get that 1kg of U-235 and building your huge power plant. This is called doing a life-cycle analysis. In that it has been shown the wind power is by far the cheapest in terms of material use, and solar and nuclear is about equal.
> The TMR (total material requirement) of nuclear power generation is significantly lower than that of thermal power generation and is similar to that of renewables. On the basis of the low greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear power generation, like renewables, it can be considered favorable not only from the global warming perspective but also from a resource use perspective.
"Life cycle resource use of nuclear power generation considering total material requirement"
>At some point, we are going to realize "green" non nuclear energy doesn't work.
Not only this, but while making other aspects of life worse or more expensive, it will also make the environment worse. Anyone who feels 'middle class' in CA has enormous buying power for consumer goods, and an obvious one for this problem is a gas/propane generator. When the accepted wisdom is for all the California suburbanites to have generators as buffers against unreliable power grids, the environment loses.
lol - overbearing policy restricts to the least common denominator with no opportunity for innovation.
Solar and Wind have been the biggest suppressor for developing longer term base load. Why would anyone who is remotely sane take a risk to develop base load power when politicians shift priorities on whatever the flavor of the day is. This has been going on for decades which is why we are now where we are. Base load generation takes a significant commitment and requires long term planning, but current politics place a high penalty on anything requiring a long term commitment.
That's a very fair point, and to be clear, nuclear/geothermal/hydro baseload should be our top priority. But I fear regulation of things like fly ash, co2 emissions will be considered overbearing and then what's stopping fossil fuels?
However, that model is twice as expensive as the one harbor freight was selling before the bill passed. The old one wasn't an inverter, so the frequency / voltage would drift around when the load changed, and couldn't be used with computers (or modern appliances). It wouldn't surprise me if they slapped a catalytic converter on it while they were upgrading the electronics.
Mid-west resident here. You think the power grid problems are only in California? Texas has their own. Mid-west can't handle some major wind or ice storms. One storm years ago I was without power for 7 days, some people in the rural area for up to a month. Solar would have been great since we didn't need a 8kw gasoline generator 24 hours a day for a 200-300w load.
> Mid-west can't handle some major wind or ice storms
Been though those, I don't really think "storm knocks out power lines" is the kind of problem people are talking about when it comes to grid reliability though. No amount of coal is going to keep the line from getting cut.
A largely renewables+storage grid will help these sorts of outages greatly, however. Most major grid outages can be traced back to things like squirrels bringing down transmission.
Once we have a bunch of storage, and are used to doing grid ops on lots of intermittent generation sources, grid reliability will go up because a power line going down will have lots of potential mitigations that are not possible today.
There is a difference between a storm physically disrupting the grid in the mid west (breaking lines), and a predictable heatwave exceeding the capacity of the grid.
In winter 200-300W load? How do you heat your house?
I'm from EU, a relatively "cold" (French Alps at 1030m) place but definitively not that cold (peak cold -25℃/-13℉ in early morning, -8/10℃ (14/18℉) during the day between January and February), with a new home witch means well insulated, with a proper VMC, water-water heat-pump etc, and well... The MINIMUM load during night and early morning is around 1kW. IF Sun shine during the day, well, the load is not much an issue from 9h30 AM to 3 PM, but for the rest is on grid.
Of course old homes heat with gas/oil/wood/* so need far less electricity (still IME a bit more than 2-300W base load though) BUT apart of wood coupled with large hot water storage (to been able to sleep instead of charging wood every hour) if you are not living in a relatively cold place I doubt you have a 6-12 month gas/oil/wood reserve at home and during such "cold episode", being very rare so far, getting new "fuel" would probably be not that easier...
I've made a small p.v. with lithium storage as a very expensive UPS for the house, being relatively autonomous in summer I hardly can be autonomous in winter: in some RARE winters like the last one where Sun shine almost all day I can survive a day to the next cutting the heating depending on battery SOC, but in case of a day without enough Sun light I'm still on grid or on emergency generator backup... Having a real autonomy IME is more a dream than something feasible, at least something feasible at human prices because spending the price of a house just in batteries who might last at maximum 10 years for some rare episode is not really a sustainable price...
Natural Gas is available during a power outage. Also our winters have nightly lows in the 30s but during the day high of 60s plus people and solar radiation and you don't have to heat the house much. This is also after a lot of insulation and spray foam in areas that in the 1970s they never insulated and leaked air.
Oh, ok, so you are in a place where heating is not a issue in general, but you cite Texas disaster and that's relevant because normally I imaging heating is a non-issue in Texas but last year...
About natural gas: if the outage is widespread I doubt you can get it: who pump it in the pipeline without energy?
Texas homes were not insulated well to handle those conditions which made it worse. Some water heaters were outside and with the power out lost their frost protection as well. In the US, there are different climate zones which change how the house is built with mine being in a more colder climate it can handle things well down to about -20F and then it has issues.
Natural gas has not gone out here for a while and is a much larger issue if it did. Gas company would have to come out and lit all the gas appliances. I assume they spend a lot to prevent that cost and can use themselves to power their infrastructure.
> Texas homes were not insulated well to handle those conditions which made it worse.
Sure, but they were (and still are?) like so because normal climate conditions do not demand that. Being able to sustain "any climate" is damn expensive, giving a certain margin while designing a home is natural, the home itself have a value, but going much further it's simply too costly at best. Now, insulation is good BOTH for hot and cold, but for instance if with mild insulation and p.v. you can live well because it's hot only during the sunny day you hardly invest in real insulation.
Beside that during a snowstorm a p.v. does not produce so if you have a battery you can recharge it on a generator, but no more than that. It's far cheaper to run than a 24/7 generator online, but it's still roughly expensive and demand a significant quantity of fuel you normally do not have at home.
About natural gas, well, I suppose their infra are designed to be "a bit" disaster proof, but how much and how in realty it's hard to tell up front. I remember for instance that a day in my original town a flood happen and for some reasons water penetrated the piping infra. Gas completely stops for two days. They have had some water pumping systems for condensation and other phenomenon but it wasn't ever used and even those who have designed it have designed for clear water without mood and sand. Apparently an event that break a pipe and push water in the net was not much assessed. Most physical infra, even critical ones, never have nor can afford doing Chaos Monkey things on their systems...
There's lots of cost effective storage methods (compressed air, compressed CO2, pumped hydro, inertial/iron oxide/lithium ion/sand/hydrogen batteries, and so forth), but the costs are all mostly up front, requiring major investments that aren't happening.
Some of them also require non-trivial time to build.
Yes, the electric car in my driveway, and in millions of Californians' driveways. My car's battery is as big as 6 Tesla Powerwalls and can power a house for days.
Really? So far I see no car's ready integrated with home p.v., some experiments do exists (Toyota) and some LIMITED commercial cars (Ford F150) offer something, but nothing is really ready.
I have a self-made p.v. with storage, I dream to being able just to integrate car's inverter power demand with p.v. inverter available capacity: most cars do not even offer MQTT/ModBUS communications to slowly regulate power demands. Just to regulate my hot water heater (a modern Daikin heat-pump) depending on p.v. available energy I have to craft some absurd home-assistant automation because NO ONE at Daikin really know what does it means "a solar-ready heat-pump" and no one who produce p.v. inverters really think that perhaps it's a good idea offering a good API to regulate devices in the house for maximum self-consumption.
Potentially we can improve self-consumption by more than 10% with just let's say +10USD per high-power device, no such thing exists on sale. The best you can get are "smart switches" who power-on or off devices with crappy automation and power routers with a smart meter if you have to limit injection to the grid.
Potentially cars can be used coupled with a fixed p.v. system and a small storage (for when you are not at home, but still need power for fridge and co) with a canbus open and universal API. Potentially. I'm curious if even find ONE BEV on sale who do that just with an open API...
The ecosystem isn't there yet to just plug a car into the wall and have it power a home. But I've been using my EVs as home battery backups during power outages for 8 years now. I don't have any of that fancy stuff, just a 2000 watt inverter that gets clamped onto the car's 12V battery under the hood, and an extension cord I run into my kitchen to plug in a power strip for the fridge/freezer, TV, wifi router/ONT and laptop charger. The car's DC-DC converter can produce around 3000 watts, but I never approach that as I don't want to damage it. My VW ID.4 theoretically is V2H capable according to the advertising, just waiting for someone to sell a box that plugs into the CCS port to make it happen.
That's a backup for fridge, but hardly for a home: how about cooking? heating/cooling?
BTW the "ecosystem" is not there IMO because no one who design such systems use them, really. I have a modern Daikin hot water system formally "integrated with the solar" etc. It's not integrated AT ALL, people who sell it do not even know how to use it's crappy ModBUS interface and that is designed just to tweak it's functioning based on the current energy price from the grid NOT depending on a p.v. system and that's one of the state-of-art new gears...
Essentially IMO no one have ever tried to tackle nor maximum self-consumption nor autonomy.
And this is the very first issue. The second issue is that nobody ever try to push standards. They sold crap in a state in the past we would have call "early stage prototype" as a finished product.
Given actual prices no real revolution can happen in technical terms.
> When the accepted wisdom is for all the California suburbanites to have generators as buffers against unreliable power grids, the environment loses.
I am not claiming you are wrong but this sounds like something I would expect to read as a scenario in an upper middle class southwest african nation. Not something in one of the world's largest economies.
I think OP meant it as a hypothetical. As in, if blackouts become a recurring event then a lot of people will solve it by throwing money at the problem. The issue is that diesel generator emissions are extremely harmful for the environment.
Note that increased load from electric vehicles is helpful to the grid, not harmful.
From a reliability perspective, all recurring load is beneficial, as it increases the overall capacity of the grid, insulating it from demand shocks, such as cooling during heatwaves.
But increased base load that can be easily time-shifted is _massively_ beneficial to the grid.
non-nuclear green energy works as part of the system. I agree you need nuclear, but you don't need 100% nuclear. If I understand it correctly, the problem now is AC demand which is easier to satisfy with solar. On hot days it tends to be sunny.
Nuclear needs a ton of water for cooling which might also be a problem in the desert. AFAIK that's one of the reasons why France's nuclear plants are struggling currently.
Even worse, if you have a large amount of wind & solar, the remaining power sources have to be very flexible. Nuclear is very non-flexible (especially in the financial sense).
Not trying to be cynical, but I hope this gets worse before it gets better, for the sake of publicity. I think non-nuclear green energy expectations need to be reined in.
Yeah. Of all the crazy climate-related goings on, this one surprised me the most. I never considered the possibility that the natural warming of water systems would compromise nuclear power. It makes sense; I’d just never considered it!
This was an environnemental directive, for not releasing water too hot into the rivers. This measure has been temporarily suspended by the government.
The major factor is for delayed maintenance during COVID, and corrosion problems appearing lately.
>This measure has been temporarily suspended by the government
Just because the measures are suspended doesn't invalidate the reason for them in the first place.
To endanger the rivers ecosystems isn't really helpful
Their choices are to start building reactors now, suck it up and remove sanctions against Russian energy or massive de-industrialization and back to the dark ages.
Reactors could not be built in time, and nuclear reactors can not be built at sufficient scale to solve the problem.
The only way to survive is massive wind, solar, storage, and transmission.
France could have led the way, but when they started building Flamanville last decade, they discovered that they nuclear doesn't really fit modern economies that well.
And with half their reactors offline for extended repairs right now, France has been a big part of Europe's energy crunch.
Macron has only proposed up to 14 new reactors, and there's no way they will come online before 2040.
Nuclear is a solution from the past, we need to build for the future.
Well, at least the Hungarians aren't dumb (i.e., know basic math). They're planning a few more reactors. Guess everyone else can huddle around the ikea furnature fires...
I would suggest that the French also know basic math. It is great that Hungary has been able to build a reactor, but they will need a lot more, and it would also be good if they could share some of that construction knowledge with their neighbors, or even build for them.
Oops, for some reason I thought Hungary had their own design and supply chains...
That leaves China and South Korea as the only groups left with know how. And China is probably out for similar reasons. South Korea has had a few corruption issues but maybe they have fixed those.
I still have questions about whether advanced economies should be generating power from giant, complex construction projects when their manufacturing productivity is so massively dominant over construction prductivity. But I would love to be proven wrong about advanced economies' ability to build nuclear economically.
California’s electricity system is all kinds of broken. Has anyone noticed the cost per kWh or the rate at which it’s increasing? Or the fact that there are a whole pile of different rate plans, several of which offer incentives to use electricity at times that would be discouraged by other plans?
CA is very far down a good-intention-paved road, and not all of it is related to nuclear per se.
> At some point, we are going to realize "green" non nuclear energy doesn't work.
It does work if you actually listen to the engineers that know what they're talking about. Renewable deployments need significant overcapacity, and have to be paired with grid expansion to average over regional variability, and energy storage to average over temporal variability.
Overbuilding should be no big deal because renewables are super cheap right now and that's something that can be done immediately. Grid expansion and storage were just not getting the attention they needed, but at least I see indications that storage is getting some investment now.
Storage is going to take more than hand waving. At some point you actually have to *deliver* cost effective energy storage at scale - right now. Otherwise shut up and start building more reliable base load from older tech; unless you want more blackouts.
> Just a few years ago, the notion that battery storage would play a key role in California’s energy future was seen by many as a quixotic dream for an emerging technology not yet reliable or cost-effective enough to be counted on.
> But in the past year alone, as California accelerates its transition to a carbon-free electric grid by 2045, there is a growing appreciation that battery storage has arrived in a big way, that it is performing well and playing an increasingly greater role in the state’s energy future.
> Mainzer called the influx of battery storage capacity on the grid over the past year “an incredible growth curve, an incredible success story,” adding that “We’ve entered a golden age of energy storage here in California.” The ISO now has more than 3,160 MW of battery storage connected to the grid and is expected to add another 700 MW by the end of June.
I've recently read some comment stating that conventional nuclear would run out of fuel in 5 years if we powered the world with only nuclear. What is the rebuttal?
There is only minor uranium prospecting at the moment, since the demand is declining. Additionnally, it doesnt take into account new technology for extracting uranium (from sea water, for example)
When demand will increase, propsection will as well, and reserves will "magically" appear out of prospection, same as gas reserves, or "Peak Oil"
Nuclear plants take around a decade to start up. Electricity generation companies are worried that by the time a new plant starts producing energy solar/other renewables will be so cheap that their plant will be obsolete. No one is willing to invest a billion dollars into a project with such long lead time given the uncertainty we are facing.
Don't the modern Small Modular Reactors (SMR's) greatly reduce both the cost and time (more importantly the time) for a nuclear reactor to get up and running? Or have I been sold on a lie?
You could easily say the same about wind, solar, tidal, hydro, geothermal, 'clean coal' (what a joke), insulation, efficiency, large scale, local scale, interconnects etc.
But no, everyone has their one true source of planet saving energy (that they have a financial interest in) and every cent that goes to any other is destroying humanity or treason that should be punished by death.
The grid of the future will have a bit of everything, and between now and then it will have a range of temporary forms to ease the transition.
Environmental groups have no power to stop SMR development.
For that matter, unless environmental groups are putting saboteurs inside construction projects around the world from France to China to the US, then environmental groups can't really be blamed for the failures of the past 20 years, either.
Personally, attempting to construct new nuclear, after the lessons of 1980s construction, is a big "stop hitting yourself" move as wel.
It is the usual partisan 'environmental group / greens are to blame for x/y/z'. Their 1 seat in parliament has affected government policy and the party that has been in power, with a large absolute majority for decades was powerless to stand in their way.
Do we know for absolute certain that we can obtain all the raw materials and manufacture solar/renewables completely within the U.S., or will we have to rely on international supply chains from countries that we might be in conflict with?
"The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the second best time is now."
Shifting from needing continuous fuel input from countries we are in conflict with, to only needed that input when we want to expand capacity, is a massive massive win for nearly any economy.
While France is generally a lot more self-sufficient (and exports energy to its neighbours), that's not happening currently, as almost 59% of its reactors are offline for maintenance.
But the op claims the one true solution is nucear 90% of the time every time... unfortunately for the country that is all in on nuclear the lights are only on because of ... well renewables and coal.
It's not good intentions. Most of these policies are created because they sound nice and "compassionate" to your average good-hearted but naive voter. Unfortunately, the reality is that a lot of these problems require "tough love" type solutions.
Saying green energy just doesn't work is bullocks. Solar works great, can run your AC basically for free during daytime. It's not a complete solution, but it definitely will create less stress on the grid.
Of course having something useful is better than not having it.
The issue is, that a lot of people seem to be interested in replacing more-useful things (nuclear which provides power during the day for a/c and power at night for EVs) with less-useful things (solar which only provides power during the day).
I disagree with calling California's intentions "good".
On homelessness, for example, that is largely a problem of California's own making. At every step the state has decided to make homes more expensive and turn homeowners into a landed gentry. As part of this, the loudest NIMBYs basically dictate what can and can't be built in the state. I would not be surprised if those NIMBYs have also been hard at work stymying necessary grid infrastructure in the same way they stymied affordable housing and high-speed rail.
Nuclear energy's downfall is a complicated subject with factors outside of California's control. Even if California wanted nuclear today, they would have to get past a whole host of regulatory and financial barriers they don't meaningfully control. It's the sort of thing the federal government needs to decide to start paying R&D on again.
> California politicians seem to have a lot of good intentions
What evidence do you have for this? It seems to me that the intentions of most California politicians are motivated by what causes people to vote for them. But their voters are a mostly captive audience, since they have such little choice in the matter - what are they gonna do, elect a “semi-fascist MAGA Republican?” Of course not!
So California politicians can do whatever they want, because their base will vote for them to beat any Republican. That means they just need to beat opponents from their own party in primaries, where they take positions on issues that are generally far outside of mainstream preferences. They’re optimizing for pleasing the extremists in their party, not for implementing whatever “good intentions” they might claim to have.
Yes, the state is basically run by Democrats, but there are clear factions within that.
For example the recent special election for California State Assembly 17th district seat (San Francisco) was between Matt Haney and David Campos.
Campos is very much in the progressive camp, and doesn't believe in things like "supply and demand".
Haney used to be in the progressive camp, but he's the kind of politician that adapts his views to what he thinks will get him elected. So over the past few years he's shifted more towards the moderate camp, and ran on a much more moderate platform.
So, what you end up having is a far left group, and then more of a center left.
While I don’t disagree that nuclear is the ideal, this event does not prove that solar and wind is not enough. A properly implemented wind and solar system can most certainly support California. They just need more of it. Half of California’s electricity in 2021 came from natural gas anyway.
Don’t forget nuclear isn’t compatible with our reality either: it’s politically infeasible to implement nuclear because everybody is scared of it. It’s also extremely expensive upfront.
it's pretty basic math, just look at the input/output for each energy type. Nuclear is the only option possible to maintain current living standards other than fossil fuels, moving to other renewables would 100% require the entire planet to accept lower quality of life for the first time since the industrial revolution
Renewables are the future. Impossible to beat the simplicity of a solid state panel, or axle directly into a generator of wind.
We are simply in the awful transitionary phase right now. It's not like starting up another Virgil C. Summer or Vogtle would have made a difference today.
> Much of the resistance towards 100% Renewable Energy (RE) systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]–[282]; storage (battery, compressed air, pumped hydro)[40]–[43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]–[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios.
> California is a great example of the road to hell is paved with good intentions. At some point, we are going to realize "green" non nuclear energy doesn't work. We need nuclear.
Isn't Californias times of peak electricity almost always in the daytime and in summer? And largely due to the need for air conditioning in many places during those times?
Why wouldn't widespread rooftop solar be able to deal with that?
The article states that later in the day is the biggest issue: "Officials asked residents to conserve power on both Wednesday and Thursday between 4 and 9 p.m. local time".
I assume you don't live in / know about the situation in France. Here most of the nuclear fission power plants are down because during the heat wave the rivers have dried up and don't provide enough coolant anymore. Yes, they are all under maintenance / being repaired as well, but that is because they aren't operational anyway so why not use the time to do what has been postponed for too long. No one in their sane minds would take down half their power plants for maintenance simultaneously. Also, nuclear power plants do not just stop producing energy when they are down, they even consume some.
In other words, nuclear fission power plants are not the solution, they even make the situation during a heat wave worse. I wish there was a silver bullet, but I fear this is not it.
I think it goes beyond good intentions into management based on distorted reality thinking followed by entirely predictable failures followed by many people explaining how the dumpster fire created is actually nice and not a problem at all. (You can see this last part in other comments here)
100% solar/wind/storage grid is entirely realizable in California using existing technology. It will require major infrastructure and manufacturing investment, unless people think relying on China-based supply chains is still a good idea for something as fundamental as the energy supply.
Note the reason nuclear isn't being considered is mostly that you'll get more GWH per billion spent on solar/wind/storage than you will per billion spent on any new nuclear facility (which would take at least ten years to build anyway, by most estimates).
Good intentions behind making life “more comfortable” achieving a result of inequality, inane busy work, and climate inversion is everyone’s fault.
Laws and borders are ephemera; California did not create this contemporary reality; the species did.
It’s easier to deflect than accept one’s role. I expect better of so-called adults; why buy the arguments of people contributing to the problem deriding others as the source?
Do less. Stop chasing incentives and buying into the nation state propaganda yourself then. Otherwise shut up with externalizing the blame; you’re part of the problem.
Green energy is working fine. The grid operator declares their little emergency, people conserve power and optional loads are disconnected, and everyone is none the wiser. It's really the perfect triumph of regulated market forces.
As for nuclear, it is disappointing that people can't see through PG&E's little tin cup scam. If we give them at least $1.4 billion, we will get at most 10 more years of Diablo. If we spend the same amount on wind, we'll get the same energy in the 10 years, and then we'll get 30 more years. It's a no-brainer and they should just kick PG&E in the teeth instead.
The 3 now decommissioned plants CA had were good for 2000 MW each. When they were online. Which was about 1/2-2/3 of the time. San Onofre’s shutdown was actually offset by at the time, the worlds largest solar project near Calexico.
I recall our state being able to go to 55,000 MW before having to curtail consumption. Now we are declaring an emergency at 43,000 MW (yesterday’s peak, source CAISO website).
What we are dealing with here is failed public policy. I agree electrification is a good and noble goal. But it is quite obvious our leaders have declared certain changes necessary without creating a transition strategy. That or their unstated transition plan is a legislatively-induced crisis.
The antecedent is that we could completely solve California’s energy and climate change crises by 2042 for $360 billion. A mountainous policy hurdle, but taller peaks have been climbed.
9 nuclear power plants, at ~5 GWh/y apiece (45,000 GWh/y combined) would barely cover the estimated power requirements of the 2035 electric car plans (around 43,000 GWh/y). 45,000 GWh/y is also less than half of the power CA imports.
>The main driver deterring PG&E from seeking a 20-year operating licence extension is the 2015 renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of producing 50% of its electricity from qualified renewable energy sources by 2030. PG&E’s model for the future cost of operating Diablo Canyon indicated that the cost per kilowatt hour was going to almost double, since the company would be forced to lower the amount of power it could produce from the plant in order to meet the state’s requirement. Dropping the capacity factor from the current 92% to say 50% would virtually double the price per kilowatt hour since costs are largely fixed.
>The state law which effectively dictates that by 2030 Diablo Canyon should operate at lower capacity each year and buy in power from intermittent renewables has apparently sealed the fate of the plant.
Important proverb but I'm skeptically if it fits here. The example is France, which struggles to generate enough energy because their nuclear fission reactors need:
* Water
* Maintenance
* Security issues
For these reasons in July 2022 only 26 from 56 were operating. Therefore Germany exports electrical energy to France with only 3 remaining nuclear fission reactors. And also to Swiss because usually Italy imports energy from France. Luckily electrical grids in Europe are connected which each other.
Electrical Energy in Germany 2022-08-30
Coal 38,0%
Wind 14,9%
Gas 14,2%
Solar 11,4%
Biomass 7,9%
Nuclear Fission 6,9%
Others 6,8% (should be water and other resources)
More than 50% are coal and gas. Bad.
More than 40% are renewable. Good!
Gas is intended only to fill short gaps. The plan is to increase wind-energy and solar-energy by a lot. While not controllable they are reliable. Nobody can cut off wind or gas. Another challenge is storing enough energy in hydrogen. Which is considered to be a good thing since some shift in recent years. We will need even more electrical energy for battery cars and for creating SAF/EFUEL for planes and the industry. The tricky part is doing the right thing, for the right reason, at the right time. Looking back that would've been done easy thirty years back ignoring short minded economic needs driven by capitalism. I still hope for progress regarding nuclear fusion because it could be so much better than fission.
I suspect this is a theme in the western world globally.
Energy demand over that time is down in the developed world - the UK for example peaked in 2005 at ~400 terrawatt-hours to ~330 terrawatt-hours in 2021 (with >10% increase in population).
Edit: I dont expect this trend will remain, cars switching from liquid fuel to electricity and heating from gas to electricity is going to accelerate at some point and cancel the efficiency savings.
Everyone likes to point and laugh when a state has grid problems. I live in Texas and so have been in the receiving end a lot.
The article is mostly about the prep work and conservation going on now to deal with the heat wave expected over the coming week. It all seems reasonable to me, exceptional circumstances need exceptional prep work and action.
In the larger scheme I think city planners are going to have to start accounting for weather events outside of the typical boundaries as more and more effects of climate change take hold.
I’m not going to point and laugh at CA, I hope you guys make it through with minimal interruptions.
It's okay to point and laugh here, because one week they're banning non-electric vehicles and the next they're saying people shouldn't charge their electric vehicles due to insufficient electricity.
There's nothing contradictory there. The fact that EV charging can be easily time-shifted is an enormous benefit. There are few things as beneficial to the grid as EVs will be.
If, and only if, you live in a place that provides you with the ability to overnight charge. So that probably excludes a vast majority of Californians who live in apartments or condos.
Charging cables are also pretty popular with thieves, since they contain a lot of copper and provide no inherent theft prevention, another minus for apartment/condo dwellers.
All of those locations will soon have EV chargers. People will demand them as EVs become mass market. My own apartment building has five EV chargers. Destination chargers will be common too.
This will happen slowly at first, but exponentially increase.
And the inverse is true, too: as gas vehicles start to decline, gas stations will slowly start to decline, and then more and more quickly close. People will start to notice it's less convenient to find a gas station, and prices are less competitive.
This will all lead to a nice positive feedback loop for EVs and a negative feedback loop for gas cars.
The point of my comment, taken in the context of the parent comment, is that time shifting is not automatic nor easy with the move to electric cars. It requires charging at home, overnight, to do. And I'm glad your apartment building has chargers - no apartment buildings have them in my hometown.
> This will happen slowly at first, but exponentially increase.
A vast majority, in my experience, of apartment building owners barely provide basic amenities to their tenants... I'm not as optimistic as you on this growth, especially when locations with fast chargers (i.e. gas station equivalents) will exist.
4-9 PM extends to about an hour after sunset this time of year. I suppose it technically involves a bit of night, but that does not overlap at all with the normal electric car charging window (midnight to 6 AM).
My car starts charging at 10:00 PM on weekdays. I don't have a time of use plan, but I like giving the garage a chance to cool down a bit and I might as well have it charge later when I'm not putting as much load trying to cool off the house for the evening.
Last night I plugged it in around 8:30 PM. It started charging at 10:00 PM. It spent ~2.5 hours charging, finishing up its charge around 12:30 PM. It pulled ~6kWh of energy over those two hours, so it was charging at about 25A of power. Then about 15 minutes before I leave in the mornings, it preconditions the car and battery to the temperature I want using the home's energy. Its nice always getting in a comfortable car every morning regardless of how hot or cold it is.
I could have shifted this even a few hours later and it still would have easily met my needs. I could of had my car start charging at 4:00 AM and it would have hit my target charge by 6:30.
It is much easier to point and laugh when just last week they were banning gas cars by 2035, and here they are telling people not to charge their EV during outages.
Didn't California just ban non-electrical vehicles?
If they don't have the grid capacity to support what exists now with a small spike...how will they support a hundred million EVs?
EDIT: For everyone saying there's still 13 years until that happens.
CA hasn't increased it's energy capacity since 2001. People think energy prices are bad now try 13 years with 100 million EV's.
And by disallowing any source of cheap non-green Energy...democratic policies will essentially favor the rich who will be the only one's who can afford a 50,000 solar array to power a 30,000 EV. The non-rich will be on a bus with the homeless crazy people.
Sources and clear evidence directly from CA dept. of energy.
And it's only the sale of new gas cars. If your goal is to drive an ICE car for as long as humanly possible you could easily make it 30 years from today only buying new.
They banned the sale of non-electric vehicles starting in 2035. Looking at automakers roadmaps, it'll be hard to find new ones by then, so this wasn't really a huge deal.
In addition to the ban happening in 2035, most people are charging their cars late at night, when there is surplus power. Although commuters may want to charge while at work.
BTW, for the people shitting on California's ban, people seem to be forgetting that a number of automakers, including Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, have announced they are ending production of gasoline powered cars in... you guessed it, 2035.
This is about economics. The gas powered car will soon be dead.
It’s the other way around. California is the biggest car market on the planet. All car makers target California (and to some extent Texas), so whatever California will buy, carmakers will build. And since California has outlawed gas cars by 2035, auto makers have declared they will stop making them by 2035.
California is such a depressing thing. You have some of the most beautiful land in earth (the California coast is uniquely beautiful imo) you had some of the smartest people in earth in the highest concentration, some of the best weather in earth, the best companies, the best most innovative industries. Everything.
And they just…squandered it. In like 15 years.
At some point does California look in the mirror and wonder if just maybe it wasnt those darn republicans after all?
What’s infuriating is watching Californian refugees flee the disaster that their policies created and then try to implement them those same policies in their new host states. I’m already seeing this happen in my state.
Ironically it was Reagan who started the gun control movement in California, because the Black Panthers decided to exercise their constitutional rights to openly carry guns.
Exactly. Firearms are my main hobby other than woodworking, but I always chuckle whenever I see a 2A advocate wearing one of those Reagan shirts that have become so popular.
And who knows how many thousands of lives have been ruined as a result of his drug policies.
While true, California also has the infamous Proposition 13, designed in the 70s by conservatives to starve the state of tax income. One of its provisions is that tax increases require a 2/3 supermajority on any tax increases enacted legislature. This effectively gave Republicans a veto on most sources of revenue.
This led to chronic budget deficits, which would often be papered over by issuing bonds, and a variety of "fees". Such as the hated auto registration fee, which was one of the grievances during the recall of Democratic governor Gray Davis.
Eventually we decided we had enough of Republicans, and Democrats gained a super majority in state congress. Now the state is running a surplus. I'm not claiming they have solved our problems, but at least we have money to build things again.
You do know that governments can also decrease their spending - and you can decrease from doing things other than just cutting services (how about fraud, waste, abuse, redundancies, etc.?) The only answer isn't to tax more?
As for the budget "surplus" - CA has retired all its debt too? Now that really is good news!
lol - surplus with a debt is just accounting fun and games. Keep deluding yourselves; I'm sure nothing bad - like not having enough power - will come from it.
Worth noting, I think, that California has the highest income tax rate in the country by a good margin and the 4th highest tax revenue per capita among states in 2021.
Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts. "Republican" governors in blue states are not really the type of right wing Republican you're thinking of, they're usually just moderates like Biden.
Based on those results I think it is fair to say by general population they were still a red state to some degree. I concur though my math was off by a magnitude of probably a decade or more.
Yes you are correct, the democratic governor was recalled, then somehow Schwarzenegger won reelection. As someone who lived there and still does, I do not think the state was red in any way, rather the left was sick of what was happen under Davis.
So you are arguing 8 years of a republican governor and 2 years of republican lead assembly vs 40+ years of a democrat governors and 40+ years both houses being controlled by democrats make CA republican lead?
Why do you say the last 15 years? We had the Enron blackouts 20 years ago that were so bad they effectively forced the recall of the governor. The grid has had its issues for a while.
As a naive idiot not born in the US who has seen the weirdest separatist movements in Europe (not only a Bavarian one, a Franconian one [Franconia being a historical kingdom, now a collection of counties within Bavaria]), I'm constantly amazed the US doesn't have more separatist movements.
Texas and California strike me as the sorts of states to one day just say "You know, fuck all y'all".
Texas and California are both extremely powerful in national politics. Neither has an incentive to give that influence up just to play at being a separatist.
We had a separatist movement, it was called the Civil War, and did not end well for the separatists. US states do not have any legal mechanism to exit the union, although Texas claims it has that right.
We do have a lot of nut jobs, particularly in low population rural states like Idaho, and they have ideas. One idea is to split off parts of California and Oregon into the state of Jefferson. Another was to split California into 6 states. All of these schemes just happen to give conservatives more power in the Senate, and are unlikely to ever happen.
It reminds me quite a lot of New Jersey. You wouldn't know it now, but New Jersey used to be an industrial powerhouse. Now it's just known for it's corruption, high taxes, bureaucracy, decaying infrastructure and dying cities.
I have no idea idea if California's peak is already in the past, but the trend isn't looking great.
When people start taking for granted, that's when they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The issues have certainly gotten worse over the past 15 years. A lot of factors combined to get us to the current state, and some were set in motion long long ago.
Just some examples:
Prop 13[1] passed in 1978:
* requires a 2/3s majority in both chambers to raise tax rates
* caps increases on property taxes to sub-inflation rates, incentivizes people to stay in their homes forever to keep their cheap rate
* forces the state to rely more and more on income taxes, which are very unstable, so we see boom and bust years. CA will be coming up on a bust year now.
* Shields home voters from any downside of their property value going up (higher tax rates you'd see in other states), so more incentive to NIMBY any new development in your neighborhood.
* cities can get more tax revenue from commercial properties than residential so they are incentivized to build office buildings and not housing (see how well that's working out for San Francisco now)
Late 70s downzoning:
* Across California many cities downzoned, severely limiting the height, density and types of housing that could be built.
* I read the environmental impact report for the late 70s downzone of San Francisco and it specifically called out how this would increase housing costs unless the city significantly increased development in the industrial parts of the city. That didn't really happen, so here we are.
The proposition system in general
* We vote on absolutely crazy things that I think should be left to legislators or bureaucrats. One thing that stood out to me as particularly weird was 2018 Prop 8[2]
* This history of this system was to limit the power of the rail roads who'd bought many of the politicians, so it was a counter to a corrupt legislature. But then someone "innovated" and started paying people to collect signatures to get something on the ballot, and now it's used for all sorts of confusing and niche purposes.
In recent years we've been seeing actual progress on some of the housing related policy. I think organizations like CA YIMBY[3] get a ton of credit for that.
But I'm not sure what we'll do about Prop 13 or the proposition system in general. Prop 13 in general is kind of a 3rd rail in CA politics. But there has been some attempts to chip away at the edges that got close. 2020 Prop 15[4] came close to passing and would have addressed some of the issues in Prop 13 for commercial properties.
Texan here. Sorry for my brothers and sisters in California. It seems that people like to talk politics about crap like this - who knew? That said, this seems to very much to be just the new norm when we want to live comfortably in an environment we've made uncomfortable. It's going to take effort, money and above all love for your fellow man. And for some reason in this country we are severely lacking in that last department.
Electric cars are primarily charged at off-peak times and so even with a full transition to electric (which is decades away) peak usage would only increase slightly.
> Electric cars are primarily charged at off-peak times
When would that time be? I get home from work after 17:00/5:00PM. Plug in my EV, and set the air conditioner to a few degrees lower. I get up and leave for work at 7:00. EV cars with Level 2 charging take from 5h (Mini SE Hardtop) to 12h (Tesla Model S). The average is 8.6h, and median at 8h. [0,1] At Level 1 charging, the charging time can take days, depending on the vehicle.
> According to California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the state’s electricity grid reaches its peak level of usage between the late afternoon and early evening – a time frame in which electricity produced by renewable resources is less available and thus costs more to produce. The peak demand period is generally defined as the hours between 4 to 9PM ... [1]
With the above details, with the best case scenario on timing & charging, that means I must not plug in my vehicle before 9:00PM, but have to before 10:30PM.
If California is hoping that people will plug in their vehicles "at the right time", that is not a re-assuring strategy.
You plug in your car when you get home, and it starts charging a few hours later at the scheduled time. This is not a remotely complicated problem and it's been solved for years.
I am regularly reminded of reasons why moving somewhere that has adequate rain and a responsibly managed electrical grid was a good idea. Cutting my rent in half and a distinct lack of forest fire smoke sure helps.
Reminds me of back in the mid 90's when I worked at IBM at the Cottle road site. One hot summer we had rolling blackouts. I was working in disk sputtering for hard drives. IBM had good backup generators. When the power went out it was just a flicker with the change over but it was enough to kill the vacuum of the Ulvac sputtering tool I was working on. More accurately, it probably killed the certification of the vacuum. We had to open her up, bake out the cryo-pumps, clean the machine then pump back down to the proper vacuum. A good 5 hours to get back in to production. Most of it pumping down to the proper vacuum. Good times.
> There are other costs to consider. Several studies have demonstrated that working women are subject to a “motherhood penalty” either during pregnancy or after they give birth.
> Newsom’s order temporarily loosens environmental regulations on gas-burning power plants, allowing them to run full-tilt during the heat wave, which the governor said could last for a week.
> The call for conservation comes hours before state lawmakers are expected to decide the fate of the state’s largest power-generating facility: the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. The two atomic reactors -- the last remaining ones in the state -- are scheduled to close by the end of 2025.
When reality meets bullshit, reality wins. Always.
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(Yes, I realize that northern California can be snow-bound in the higher elevations)
Seriously though, I watch a few builders on YouTube, and the amount of insulation they put on spec homes is the minimal amount they can get away with. A shame, considering how you can get a home well enough insulated that you could heat it in a Canadian winter with a hair dryer.
My uninsulated 1930s house in Ohio holds heat better than my friend's Palo Alto apartment.
Say, after salary, taxes, food you have 1000 euros per month that you can spend. There are two houses, where in one, you can spend 500 on mortgage and 500 on energy bills, and in the other, you can spend 700 on mortgage and 300 on energy bills.
But if you just buy the house that has 500 on mortgage because "it's cheaper", it's not actually cheaper in total.
This should also interest banks that give people mortgages.
Also, if you rent that house out, if the energy cost is directly part of the rent, the house with the higher energy cost has a higher rent, hence it's less attractive. Again, market forces. So in reality, you can get more profit out of the house that has the lower energy cost, because in reality, the cost is not be passed directly to the renters.
The real problem is that the demand models did not account for a worsening climate at the pace that it is encountering record hot days. Though for that matter, almost nobody accounted for that, so it's hard to blame the grid planners too much.
https://www.energy.gov/oe/activities/technology-development/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_demand_management
You could also ask people to reduce electric range cooking, electric dryer usage, etc, but that can be harder to describe and offer more inconvenience.
Also, most people with an electric car probably have another mode of transportation they can switch to.
TLDR Build more renewables, transmission, and battery storage; shift flexible loads to when renewable power is generating.
[1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO?wind=false&...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=california+solar+canals
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/x0wih4/california_mo...
[4] https://www.caiso.com/Documents/BriefingonRenewablesandEnerg...
[5] https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html
Maybe they do maintenance at night and thats why they don't have excess capacity as one would normally expect?
If someone wants to dig into it, here's the data: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx
Or are they holding out for SMEs that don't need large volumes of water?
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1119778975/california-lawmake...
But too many plants have gone offline and not been replaced; generating capacity appears to be flat for ten+ years or more.
can anyone explain to me why cooling water is an issue for nuke plants? In areas with less water, can’t a coolant fluid be used with a compressor and fans powered by the reactor to cool the system down?
It would reduce energy yields but my intuition says the energy cost for cooling would be negligible compared to production.
Also, can’t coastal water be used for plants near oceans?
I just don’t understand how cooling is an issue.
from this article:
https://monarchpartnership.co.uk/nuclear-power-water-consump...
Away from the coast you can do dry cooling with almost no water, going straight to air. It's just more expensive so it's not done often.
In retrospect, bad planning.
You could build air-cooled power plants, but it's more expensive.
https://www.powermag.com/air-cooled-condensers-eliminate-pla...
You could build water-cooled systems with extra capacity, so that when the water in the river gets warm in the hot summer months, it would not cause problems for the for the cooling system. But it's more expensive than a capacity that is designed to be just-so.
A long time ago, once-through water cooling systems were banned in new generation, due to damage to water ecosystems. Retrofitting the cooling system was deemed to be in the 2010s, and other resources were planned to replace Diablo Canyon.
Since then, heat waves have gotten far far worse due to climate change, and climate change was not taken into account during the planning.
Since utility planning is typically at least five years lead time, there has been some adjustment, but not complete adjustment to the new reality we are facing.
California also suffered the disaster of the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak, which accelerated the shift away from natural gas generation.
It's unlikely that California will ever install SMRs, as they are far too away from deployment to be able to help with any problems. California needs new generation now, not in 2035.
Advanced geothermal is being deployed here, and in general I think geothermal has far far more potential on the future grid than SMRs.
I'm glad they fought back against the anti-nuclear industry trying to close it prematurely. Now they should extend it 20 more years.
The site is toxic anyway - locals dont mind it in 'their back yard', infrastructure is there, skilled workers are there, everything is there. Every existing nuclear site in the world should be thinking about sticking another couple of reactors on site!
It's not that toxic. I was just there a few months ago, hiking along the water in the Point Buchon Trail. It was beautiful, with wildlife everywhere. Pure unadulterated coastline teeming with life. At the very end you can catch a glimpse of the nuclear plant
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/in-your-community/loca...
In my hometown we had an experimental nuclear plant powering my childhood. It shut down in the 1990s and today is total greenfield. Sadly, now my hometown is almost entirely fossil fueled.
DECON takes at least 7 years, SAFSTOR 50+ years. 50% of the decommionings in the US are the slow kind.
If you are going for the quick kind, you have to take everything off site somewhere and stick it in a hole in the ground (or probably store it on another nuclear plant site) - and then that hole in the ground is radioactive.
Its likely when they decommission Diablo Canyon, they will turn off the power and post a guard at the gate for 50 years and not touch anything.
I don't understand people's attachment to nuclear. We have far better tech now.
The large transmission lines at DC are incredibly valuable, however. There should be 4-5GW of floating offshore wind built there, and 10-100GWh of batteries at the old DC site.
I'm not aware of what that could possibly be?
Per unit of fuel it produces the most energy of any commercially available fuel source by a tremendously large margin. It produces extremely little waste compared to any commercially available fuel source. And the waste it does produce is, again by far, the cleanest and safest waste to manage.
Fusion is probably the only energy source that would, theoretically, provide better returns but is likely still decades away from commercial availability.
So... what technology are you referring to?
That is a myth based on only looking at the latest few Western builds and totally ignoring progress in the following designs/builds:
Hualong One
APR-1400
ABWR
VVER-1000
The world is moving forward with large LWRs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
There is an ocean along the California coast. Desalination is something they need anyways, so combo nuclear+desalination plants sound like a plan.
If you're near the coast, open all windows at night when temps are low, and let the house get as cold as possible during the night.
In the morning, close all windows and cover them with blinds, and turn the A/C off during the hottest part of the day.
Don't open the fridge or freezer if possible, and keep lights off.
AC efficiency increases as temperature decreases.
You would have to deal with the fact that your house is now frigidly cold. Also, I can’t remember the last house I lived in California that had decent insulation - so that’s a major assumption.
I live up north now where insulation is a given, but when I lived in Louisiana, the houses were made from sticks. High ceilings, but no insulation anywhere.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014...
"Energy demand for climate control was analyzed for Miami (the warmest large metropolitan area in the US) and Minneapolis (the coldest large metropolitan area). ... The results indicate that climate control in Minneapolis is about 3.5 times as energy demanding as in Miami."
This is like saying "get to the breadlines early to be able to get your bread for the week"
I'm still incredibly mad that PG&E's grid mismanagement has caused massive fires and killed so many people. Still mad as hell about that gas line explosion that killed people and took out homes.
So unless you have a particular fix or action to propose that comes from partisan politics, there's not much point into turning this into a partisan politics battle.
I (I'll even go so far to say that a vast majority of liberal leaning folks) don't rejoice in other's misery.
And with that, I'm finished with this particular thread. Have a great day. :)
PG&E is criticized in these cases by pretty much everybody, liberal and conservative. And rightfully so, especially since they also have the distinction of starting so many forest fires.
So it's rather comedic to see the paragon of progressive virtue (signaling) suddenly suffering grid failure. Click through a few of these:
https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/power...
PG&E is a notable exception. However, PG&E is a mismanaged dumpster fire. There are costs to being the "leader in renewable energies" and this is one of them. Unfortunately for us normal people we have to suffer because of this virtue signaling and it comes at times like this in absurd heat waves going through the west. The problem with California in general is everything is done in a knee jerk fashion. There are right ways and wrong ways to roll out new energy programs and by fiat ruling to the rip the bandaid is how you get a situation that will kill people. This is an actual notable benefit of conservatism (the principle, not the people). You may be sometimes decades behind the latest and greatest but you don't find yourself in a heat wave without enough power, either.
California's grid problems are not from "green energy" and it's frankly ridiculous to even say something like that. California's grid problems are from not planning for massive generation increases to match an unprecedented heat wave.
It's not from natural gas plants not being properly weatherized, it's not because "green energy" can't do something, it's 100% from not building enough generation.
Politics is too often a way to turn off our brains and avoid critical thinking. And in this case, as it is also in evaluating Texas's failure, partisan politics and "green energy" only obscures truth rather than revealing truth.
There's a double standard here, and Texas does not get criticized where California does:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-power-use-breaks-reco...
I guess I would equate it to getting DDoS'ed. You might declare an "emergency" but put into practice plans you had for when this happened. It's the exception, not the rule. It's an "emergency" but it's planned for.
Would it be great if this didn't happen? Sure. But that there clearly are plans in place when it happens is a good sign. It's much better than if nothing was done. You'd still have the emergency, but with no clear plan of action.
The population of a single city in CA (LA) is twice that.
Not an apples to apples comparison.
Meanwhile, in California, you can't do certain things, like run a ship engine for power, most of the time because it causes unnecessary pollution that affects human health, but when this kind of emergency is declared, they relax those rules for a short period.
Other large states have also had power problems. Texas (where I live) nearly had to shut down its entire grid due to a hard freeze last year and we've been getting regular requests from the state's grid management organization to limit power consumption on hot days. But our climate change problems tend more towards droughts and hurricanes, which don't affect the statewide power grid very much.
* California imports about 25-30% of its electricity while Nebraska exports over 15%[1].
* California produces about 5 times as much electricity as Nebraska[2], with about 8 times the peak generating capacity[3][4].
* All of Nebraska's electric utilities are publicly owned[3].
* California relies more on hydroelectric power, which is more vulnerable to climate change[5].
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46156 [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/?sid=US#/series/51 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Nebr... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Cali... [5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...
This seems to be a repeating talking point in regards to a number of issues these days.
Which is unusual to me as this is could also be a way to justify poor policy.
From my old experience I could suggest buying diesel generator and have enough supply of diesel fuel to run it for a few days at least. Also few tonnes of coal, but that’s for cold climate.
He's clearly laid out the aspects he's talking about, too. If availability of electricity is something you prioritize, then the failure in that regard is significant. If you don't prioritize that, then recognize that you're probably in the minority.
I'm honestly not sure how where that falls on the spectrum of third world power reliability.
(Or more accurately, chose not to buy more efficient, less polluting versions of those things)
More EVs and V2G would go a long way to stabilize the grid.
The forecasting argument doesn’t hold water for me - California is the state trumpeting about global warming the longest; if this is because of GW and their own projections didn’t consider it, well…
I'd call that more than 'enough'.
Like if I gave you an ounce of ice cream, and an ounce of steak, and you complain about not having enough food, I don't get to say "but it's 50% steak, that's more than enough".
It's utter madness. This is 100% a problem of failed policy, zero planning and living in a fantasy world detached from reality.
Good intentions doesn't make a good government. California politicians seem to have a lot of good intentions on homelessness, jail reform, education, healthcare, but the reality is just an awful hell zone.
Edit: a typo
The one nuclear plant in California makes 10% of the entire states electricity. And last night the state assembly voted 31/1 to not prematurely shut it down as planned.
And we don't fear russia bombing Ukraine's WECs
Oh and nuclear fission used in breeder reactors is just as renewable as the fusion fuel in the sun that powers wind/solar/hydro/bio. We can make 100% of the world's primary energy for 4 billion years with nuclear before running out of fuel.
It was interesting to see (thanks, Europe) how nuclear power plants are still somewhat susceptible to global climate change, since they require vast amounts of water below a certain temperature to run.
Nuclear plants can also be cooled with nearly zero water usage, using dry cooling (dump heat straight to air basically with air radiators). This is more expensive, but may make sense as climate change kicks in. It's perfectly doable and safe.
Today creating hydrogen from solar and burning it in a turbine is competitive with new built nuclear. Not that anyone suggests it for anything else than emergencies, since the round trip efficiency cost would be ludicrous.
Yet everyone just says "ok nuclear is the most expensive and always will be no matter what"
Add in a carbon fee and a low-carbon capacity market and all of a sudden nuclear would be the cheapest.
Markets are human constructs that are currently woefully messed up and leading us in dangerous directions.
Transmission lines are not but comparing how many HVDC lines you can get for the difference between renewables and a single nuclear reactor is laughable. This is not even mentioning the cost that has gone into building the current grid in a hub and spoke model around big centralized producers.
Not that we need to throw it away, but it is worth mentioning when talking nuclear. Especially new builds.
Power 2 X makes storage solved at costs lower or in line to nuclear. Not that anyone would accept those costs.
The real interesting research which is currently happening is around grid forming inverts. Being able create a country wide grid without any synchronous producers or coupling.
The way people argue about it, no it absolutely not. CAISO generates about 25,000 MWd in a day. If you just use LCOE you would say, ok let's take the LCOE in $/MWh, convert to $/MWd and multiply them for each energy source. Wow look how cheap 100% wind and solar are!
But oops they totally missed the fact that oops in Winter they have to build at least 4x capacity to fill up the shockingly large amount of chemical batteries (hundreds of skyscrapers full) and wires during the windy/sunny periods, and then rebuild all of this stuff every 25 years. Now it looks very expensive and crazy.
The 92% capacity factor nuclear plant running for 80 years is looking good.
Wind and solar alone are the cheapest forms of energy as tents are the cheapest form of housing.
Many studies suggest that a good mixture of hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar are the ideal. Let's not rule out nuclear due to current market quirks.
That is 24 giga watt hours from a kg or uranium. The article says California is set to "top 48 gigawatts" on some days. If it stayed at peak usage all year 48 * 24 * 365 / 24 = 17,520 kg of uranium for constant peak California consumption.
That seems like a lot until you think about how much oil it saves
That same capacity would require 26 Diablo canyon equivalent stations or only 30.5 sq.mi. [2]
Of course, Greater Los Angeles area itself is 33,954 sq.mi, so if we assume 10% of that are roofs, parking lots and other structures that can be covered with a solar panel setup somehow (big assumption, but this is a thought experiment after all), we’d have close to 1/2 of the total already covered. Add other populated areas in CA and things don’t look so outlandish with some combination of Nuclear/storage/solar.
The big question is whether we have the social cohesion to pull this off or not. The train from LA to SF mess has me worried here…
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mo... [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
You also have to consider what you need to get that 1kg of U-235 and building your huge power plant. This is called doing a life-cycle analysis. In that it has been shown the wind power is by far the cheapest in terms of material use, and solar and nuclear is about equal.
> The TMR (total material requirement) of nuclear power generation is significantly lower than that of thermal power generation and is similar to that of renewables. On the basis of the low greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear power generation, like renewables, it can be considered favorable not only from the global warming perspective but also from a resource use perspective.
"Life cycle resource use of nuclear power generation considering total material requirement"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262...
Not only this, but while making other aspects of life worse or more expensive, it will also make the environment worse. Anyone who feels 'middle class' in CA has enormous buying power for consumer goods, and an obvious one for this problem is a gas/propane generator. When the accepted wisdom is for all the California suburbanites to have generators as buffers against unreliable power grids, the environment loses.
Solar and Wind have been the biggest suppressor for developing longer term base load. Why would anyone who is remotely sane take a risk to develop base load power when politicians shift priorities on whatever the flavor of the day is. This has been going on for decades which is why we are now where we are. Base load generation takes a significant commitment and requires long term planning, but current politics place a high penalty on anything requiring a long term commitment.
Talk about a tragedy of commons :p
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
My reading suggests that this won't impact anything that you should consider plugging your house into. Instead, it's targeting stuff like this:
https://www.harborfreight.com/generators-engines/generators/...
However, that model is twice as expensive as the one harbor freight was selling before the bill passed. The old one wasn't an inverter, so the frequency / voltage would drift around when the load changed, and couldn't be used with computers (or modern appliances). It wouldn't surprise me if they slapped a catalytic converter on it while they were upgrading the electronics.
Been though those, I don't really think "storm knocks out power lines" is the kind of problem people are talking about when it comes to grid reliability though. No amount of coal is going to keep the line from getting cut.
Once we have a bunch of storage, and are used to doing grid ops on lots of intermittent generation sources, grid reliability will go up because a power line going down will have lots of potential mitigations that are not possible today.
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/dangerous-heat-causi...
https://www.wdrb.com/news/a-southern-indiana-utility-warns-r...
I'm from EU, a relatively "cold" (French Alps at 1030m) place but definitively not that cold (peak cold -25℃/-13℉ in early morning, -8/10℃ (14/18℉) during the day between January and February), with a new home witch means well insulated, with a proper VMC, water-water heat-pump etc, and well... The MINIMUM load during night and early morning is around 1kW. IF Sun shine during the day, well, the load is not much an issue from 9h30 AM to 3 PM, but for the rest is on grid.
Of course old homes heat with gas/oil/wood/* so need far less electricity (still IME a bit more than 2-300W base load though) BUT apart of wood coupled with large hot water storage (to been able to sleep instead of charging wood every hour) if you are not living in a relatively cold place I doubt you have a 6-12 month gas/oil/wood reserve at home and during such "cold episode", being very rare so far, getting new "fuel" would probably be not that easier...
I've made a small p.v. with lithium storage as a very expensive UPS for the house, being relatively autonomous in summer I hardly can be autonomous in winter: in some RARE winters like the last one where Sun shine almost all day I can survive a day to the next cutting the heating depending on battery SOC, but in case of a day without enough Sun light I'm still on grid or on emergency generator backup... Having a real autonomy IME is more a dream than something feasible, at least something feasible at human prices because spending the price of a house just in batteries who might last at maximum 10 years for some rare episode is not really a sustainable price...
About natural gas: if the outage is widespread I doubt you can get it: who pump it in the pipeline without energy?
Natural gas has not gone out here for a while and is a much larger issue if it did. Gas company would have to come out and lit all the gas appliances. I assume they spend a lot to prevent that cost and can use themselves to power their infrastructure.
Sure, but they were (and still are?) like so because normal climate conditions do not demand that. Being able to sustain "any climate" is damn expensive, giving a certain margin while designing a home is natural, the home itself have a value, but going much further it's simply too costly at best. Now, insulation is good BOTH for hot and cold, but for instance if with mild insulation and p.v. you can live well because it's hot only during the sunny day you hardly invest in real insulation.
Beside that during a snowstorm a p.v. does not produce so if you have a battery you can recharge it on a generator, but no more than that. It's far cheaper to run than a 24/7 generator online, but it's still roughly expensive and demand a significant quantity of fuel you normally do not have at home.
About natural gas, well, I suppose their infra are designed to be "a bit" disaster proof, but how much and how in realty it's hard to tell up front. I remember for instance that a day in my original town a flood happen and for some reasons water penetrated the piping infra. Gas completely stops for two days. They have had some water pumping systems for condensation and other phenomenon but it wasn't ever used and even those who have designed it have designed for clear water without mood and sand. Apparently an event that break a pipe and push water in the net was not much assessed. Most physical infra, even critical ones, never have nor can afford doing Chaos Monkey things on their systems...
Some of them also require non-trivial time to build.
https://enphase.com/homeowners/home-solar-batteries
I have a self-made p.v. with storage, I dream to being able just to integrate car's inverter power demand with p.v. inverter available capacity: most cars do not even offer MQTT/ModBUS communications to slowly regulate power demands. Just to regulate my hot water heater (a modern Daikin heat-pump) depending on p.v. available energy I have to craft some absurd home-assistant automation because NO ONE at Daikin really know what does it means "a solar-ready heat-pump" and no one who produce p.v. inverters really think that perhaps it's a good idea offering a good API to regulate devices in the house for maximum self-consumption.
Potentially we can improve self-consumption by more than 10% with just let's say +10USD per high-power device, no such thing exists on sale. The best you can get are "smart switches" who power-on or off devices with crappy automation and power routers with a smart meter if you have to limit injection to the grid.
Potentially cars can be used coupled with a fixed p.v. system and a small storage (for when you are not at home, but still need power for fridge and co) with a canbus open and universal API. Potentially. I'm curious if even find ONE BEV on sale who do that just with an open API...
BTW the "ecosystem" is not there IMO because no one who design such systems use them, really. I have a modern Daikin hot water system formally "integrated with the solar" etc. It's not integrated AT ALL, people who sell it do not even know how to use it's crappy ModBUS interface and that is designed just to tweak it's functioning based on the current energy price from the grid NOT depending on a p.v. system and that's one of the state-of-art new gears...
Essentially IMO no one have ever tried to tackle nor maximum self-consumption nor autonomy.
And this is the very first issue. The second issue is that nobody ever try to push standards. They sold crap in a state in the past we would have call "early stage prototype" as a finished product.
Given actual prices no real revolution can happen in technical terms.
I am not claiming you are wrong but this sounds like something I would expect to read as a scenario in an upper middle class southwest african nation. Not something in one of the world's largest economies.
From a reliability perspective, all recurring load is beneficial, as it increases the overall capacity of the grid, insulating it from demand shocks, such as cooling during heatwaves.
But increased base load that can be easily time-shifted is _massively_ beneficial to the grid.
Nuclear needs a ton of water for cooling which might also be a problem in the desert. AFAIK that's one of the reasons why France's nuclear plants are struggling currently.
https://www.dw.com/en/french-nuclear-plants-break-a-sweat-ov...
Just because the measures are suspended doesn't invalidate the reason for them in the first place. To endanger the rivers ecosystems isn't really helpful
https://twitter.com/DolanGeraldine/status/156439235330088960...
Their choices are to start building reactors now, suck it up and remove sanctions against Russian energy or massive de-industrialization and back to the dark ages.
The only way to survive is massive wind, solar, storage, and transmission.
France could have led the way, but when they started building Flamanville last decade, they discovered that they nuclear doesn't really fit modern economies that well.
And with half their reactors offline for extended repairs right now, France has been a big part of Europe's energy crunch.
Macron has only proposed up to 14 new reactors, and there's no way they will come online before 2040.
Nuclear is a solution from the past, we need to build for the future.
https://balkangreenenergynews.com/hungary-to-build-paks-ii-n...
Ironically, Russian reactors would reduce dependence on Russian gas. That kindof hurts my brain.
That leaves China and South Korea as the only groups left with know how. And China is probably out for similar reasons. South Korea has had a few corruption issues but maybe they have fixed those.
I still have questions about whether advanced economies should be generating power from giant, complex construction projects when their manufacturing productivity is so massively dominant over construction prductivity. But I would love to be proven wrong about advanced economies' ability to build nuclear economically.
South Korea just singed a deal with Russia. They are going to build nuclear plant for Egypt: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220828-russia-south-kore...
CA is very far down a good-intention-paved road, and not all of it is related to nuclear per se.
It does work if you actually listen to the engineers that know what they're talking about. Renewable deployments need significant overcapacity, and have to be paired with grid expansion to average over regional variability, and energy storage to average over temporal variability.
Overbuilding should be no big deal because renewables are super cheap right now and that's something that can be done immediately. Grid expansion and storage were just not getting the attention they needed, but at least I see indications that storage is getting some investment now.
Physics doesn't give a crap about your feelings.
> Just a few years ago, the notion that battery storage would play a key role in California’s energy future was seen by many as a quixotic dream for an emerging technology not yet reliable or cost-effective enough to be counted on.
> But in the past year alone, as California accelerates its transition to a carbon-free electric grid by 2045, there is a growing appreciation that battery storage has arrived in a big way, that it is performing well and playing an increasingly greater role in the state’s energy future.
> Mainzer called the influx of battery storage capacity on the grid over the past year “an incredible growth curve, an incredible success story,” adding that “We’ve entered a golden age of energy storage here in California.” The ISO now has more than 3,160 MW of battery storage connected to the grid and is expected to add another 700 MW by the end of June.
progress but still a drop in the bucket.
There is a lot of battery storage planned for California.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/03/14/californias-solar-mar...
The grid wasn't built in a day, and it won't be changed in a day.
That might be true with stockpiles of already-mined uranium, but we can definitely mine more uranium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
If half of the energy spend demonizing nuclear was spent on modernizing it, SMRs would be a long solved problem.
It's the ultimate "stop hitting yourself" :p
But no, everyone has their one true source of planet saving energy (that they have a financial interest in) and every cent that goes to any other is destroying humanity or treason that should be punished by death.
The grid of the future will have a bit of everything, and between now and then it will have a range of temporary forms to ease the transition.
For that matter, unless environmental groups are putting saboteurs inside construction projects around the world from France to China to the US, then environmental groups can't really be blamed for the failures of the past 20 years, either.
Personally, attempting to construct new nuclear, after the lessons of 1980s construction, is a big "stop hitting yourself" move as wel.
"The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the second best time is now."
A: Climate change will kill us all. Let's dismantle our socioeconomic system to prevent it!
B: How about nuclear power?
A: I don't want nuclear power!
A: I want to dismantle our socioeconomic system!
Saying green energy just doesn't work is bullocks. Solar works great, can run your AC basically for free during daytime. It's not a complete solution, but it definitely will create less stress on the grid.
a) renewables provide the most power when power is used the most (during the day when the sun is shining to run a/c)
b) charging EVs at night will balance the grid
I don't think you can do B with A, right?
Of course having something useful is better than not having it.
The issue is, that a lot of people seem to be interested in replacing more-useful things (nuclear which provides power during the day for a/c and power at night for EVs) with less-useful things (solar which only provides power during the day).
On homelessness, for example, that is largely a problem of California's own making. At every step the state has decided to make homes more expensive and turn homeowners into a landed gentry. As part of this, the loudest NIMBYs basically dictate what can and can't be built in the state. I would not be surprised if those NIMBYs have also been hard at work stymying necessary grid infrastructure in the same way they stymied affordable housing and high-speed rail.
Nuclear energy's downfall is a complicated subject with factors outside of California's control. Even if California wanted nuclear today, they would have to get past a whole host of regulatory and financial barriers they don't meaningfully control. It's the sort of thing the federal government needs to decide to start paying R&D on again.
What evidence do you have for this? It seems to me that the intentions of most California politicians are motivated by what causes people to vote for them. But their voters are a mostly captive audience, since they have such little choice in the matter - what are they gonna do, elect a “semi-fascist MAGA Republican?” Of course not!
So California politicians can do whatever they want, because their base will vote for them to beat any Republican. That means they just need to beat opponents from their own party in primaries, where they take positions on issues that are generally far outside of mainstream preferences. They’re optimizing for pleasing the extremists in their party, not for implementing whatever “good intentions” they might claim to have.
For example the recent special election for California State Assembly 17th district seat (San Francisco) was between Matt Haney and David Campos.
Campos is very much in the progressive camp, and doesn't believe in things like "supply and demand".
Haney used to be in the progressive camp, but he's the kind of politician that adapts his views to what he thinks will get him elected. So over the past few years he's shifted more towards the moderate camp, and ran on a much more moderate platform.
So, what you end up having is a far left group, and then more of a center left.
Then at the local level you have stuff like Shasta county almost getting taken over by far right groups: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-12/shasta-c...
Don’t forget nuclear isn’t compatible with our reality either: it’s politically infeasible to implement nuclear because everybody is scared of it. It’s also extremely expensive upfront.
We are simply in the awful transitionary phase right now. It's not like starting up another Virgil C. Summer or Vogtle would have made a difference today.
> Much of the resistance towards 100% Renewable Energy (RE) systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]–[282]; storage (battery, compressed air, pumped hydro)[40]–[43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]–[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
Isn't Californias times of peak electricity almost always in the daytime and in summer? And largely due to the need for air conditioning in many places during those times?
Why wouldn't widespread rooftop solar be able to deal with that?
In other words, nuclear fission power plants are not the solution, they even make the situation during a heat wave worse. I wish there was a silver bullet, but I fear this is not it.
For high temperature reactors (e.g. helium or molten salt), air cooling is trivial.
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/los-angeles-100-percent-renewa...
Note the reason nuclear isn't being considered is mostly that you'll get more GWH per billion spent on solar/wind/storage than you will per billion spent on any new nuclear facility (which would take at least ten years to build anyway, by most estimates).
Laws and borders are ephemera; California did not create this contemporary reality; the species did.
It’s easier to deflect than accept one’s role. I expect better of so-called adults; why buy the arguments of people contributing to the problem deriding others as the source?
Do less. Stop chasing incentives and buying into the nation state propaganda yourself then. Otherwise shut up with externalizing the blame; you’re part of the problem.
As for nuclear, it is disappointing that people can't see through PG&E's little tin cup scam. If we give them at least $1.4 billion, we will get at most 10 more years of Diablo. If we spend the same amount on wind, we'll get the same energy in the 10 years, and then we'll get 30 more years. It's a no-brainer and they should just kick PG&E in the teeth instead.
What are you talking about?
I recall our state being able to go to 55,000 MW before having to curtail consumption. Now we are declaring an emergency at 43,000 MW (yesterday’s peak, source CAISO website).
What we are dealing with here is failed public policy. I agree electrification is a good and noble goal. But it is quite obvious our leaders have declared certain changes necessary without creating a transition strategy. That or their unstated transition plan is a legislatively-induced crisis.
New nuclear power plants take around 20 years and $40B to build, each.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
In March 2022, CPUC approved a plan to add 18.8 GW solar, 6.7 GW wind, and 14.7 GW batteries by 2032 at 18c/kWh, reaching 73% renewables.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_California
43,000 GWh/y = 15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles
.24 KWh/m is for the latest Tesla 3 cars.
5GWh/y is from https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/how-...
>The main driver deterring PG&E from seeking a 20-year operating licence extension is the 2015 renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of producing 50% of its electricity from qualified renewable energy sources by 2030. PG&E’s model for the future cost of operating Diablo Canyon indicated that the cost per kilowatt hour was going to almost double, since the company would be forced to lower the amount of power it could produce from the plant in order to meet the state’s requirement. Dropping the capacity factor from the current 92% to say 50% would virtually double the price per kilowatt hour since costs are largely fixed.
>The state law which effectively dictates that by 2030 Diablo Canyon should operate at lower capacity each year and buy in power from intermittent renewables has apparently sealed the fate of the plant.
Electrical Energy in Germany 2022-08-30
More than 50% are coal and gas. Bad. More than 40% are renewable. Good!Gas is intended only to fill short gaps. The plan is to increase wind-energy and solar-energy by a lot. While not controllable they are reliable. Nobody can cut off wind or gas. Another challenge is storing enough energy in hydrogen. Which is considered to be a good thing since some shift in recent years. We will need even more electrical energy for battery cars and for creating SAF/EFUEL for planes and the industry. The tricky part is doing the right thing, for the right reason, at the right time. Looking back that would've been done easy thirty years back ignoring short minded economic needs driven by capitalism. I still hope for progress regarding nuclear fusion because it could be so much better than fission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Crisis...
https://www.srf.ch/news/international/energiepolitik-frankre...
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/energiepreise-aktuell... # updated daily
This is not a factual statement, it's a religious statement.
"Green energy" has nothing to do with what is going on with this grid emergency.
Power generation capacity with breakdowns by type and import for the state of California.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
The most fascinating point I saw is that the total power generation capacity effectively hasn't changed since 2001.
Energy demand over that time is down in the developed world - the UK for example peaked in 2005 at ~400 terrawatt-hours to ~330 terrawatt-hours in 2021 (with >10% increase in population).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/323381/total-demand-for-...
Edit: I dont expect this trend will remain, cars switching from liquid fuel to electricity and heating from gas to electricity is going to accelerate at some point and cancel the efficiency savings.
The article is mostly about the prep work and conservation going on now to deal with the heat wave expected over the coming week. It all seems reasonable to me, exceptional circumstances need exceptional prep work and action.
In the larger scheme I think city planners are going to have to start accounting for weather events outside of the typical boundaries as more and more effects of climate change take hold.
I’m not going to point and laugh at CA, I hope you guys make it through with minimal interruptions.
If, and only if, you live in a place that provides you with the ability to overnight charge. So that probably excludes a vast majority of Californians who live in apartments or condos.
Charging cables are also pretty popular with thieves, since they contain a lot of copper and provide no inherent theft prevention, another minus for apartment/condo dwellers.
This will happen slowly at first, but exponentially increase.
And the inverse is true, too: as gas vehicles start to decline, gas stations will slowly start to decline, and then more and more quickly close. People will start to notice it's less convenient to find a gas station, and prices are less competitive.
This will all lead to a nice positive feedback loop for EVs and a negative feedback loop for gas cars.
> This will happen slowly at first, but exponentially increase.
A vast majority, in my experience, of apartment building owners barely provide basic amenities to their tenants... I'm not as optimistic as you on this growth, especially when locations with fast chargers (i.e. gas station equivalents) will exist.
When are you advocating people charge their cars again?
Last night I plugged it in around 8:30 PM. It started charging at 10:00 PM. It spent ~2.5 hours charging, finishing up its charge around 12:30 PM. It pulled ~6kWh of energy over those two hours, so it was charging at about 25A of power. Then about 15 minutes before I leave in the mornings, it preconditions the car and battery to the temperature I want using the home's energy. Its nice always getting in a comfortable car every morning regardless of how hot or cold it is.
I could have shifted this even a few hours later and it still would have easily met my needs. I could of had my car start charging at 4:00 AM and it would have hit my target charge by 6:30.
"Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true."
If they don't have the grid capacity to support what exists now with a small spike...how will they support a hundred million EVs?
EDIT: For everyone saying there's still 13 years until that happens.
CA hasn't increased it's energy capacity since 2001. People think energy prices are bad now try 13 years with 100 million EV's.
And by disallowing any source of cheap non-green Energy...democratic policies will essentially favor the rich who will be the only one's who can afford a 50,000 solar array to power a 30,000 EV. The non-rich will be on a bus with the homeless crazy people.
Sources and clear evidence directly from CA dept. of energy.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
Found this out from this poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32676518
Wasn't there a recent article on this very site, titled along the lines of "Yes, the US electric grid can handle EVs"?
BTW, for the people shitting on California's ban, people seem to be forgetting that a number of automakers, including Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, have announced they are ending production of gasoline powered cars in... you guessed it, 2035.
This is about economics. The gas powered car will soon be dead.
When are you going to charge your electric cars again?
It’s the other way around. California is the biggest car market on the planet. All car makers target California (and to some extent Texas), so whatever California will buy, carmakers will build. And since California has outlawed gas cars by 2035, auto makers have declared they will stop making them by 2035.
And they just…squandered it. In like 15 years.
At some point does California look in the mirror and wonder if just maybe it wasnt those darn republicans after all?
What’s infuriating is watching Californian refugees flee the disaster that their policies created and then try to implement them those same policies in their new host states. I’m already seeing this happen in my state.
And who knows how many thousands of lives have been ruined as a result of his drug policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
This led to chronic budget deficits, which would often be papered over by issuing bonds, and a variety of "fees". Such as the hated auto registration fee, which was one of the grievances during the recall of Democratic governor Gray Davis.
Eventually we decided we had enough of Republicans, and Democrats gained a super majority in state congress. Now the state is running a surplus. I'm not claiming they have solved our problems, but at least we have money to build things again.
lol - surplus with a debt is just accounting fun and games. Keep deluding yourselves; I'm sure nothing bad - like not having enough power - will come from it.
[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/8/13563106/e...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Legislature#:....
Please don't post straight up lies to push your political agenda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_California_gubernatorial_...
Based on those results I think it is fair to say by general population they were still a red state to some degree. I concur though my math was off by a magnitude of probably a decade or more.
So you are arguing 8 years of a republican governor and 2 years of republican lead assembly vs 40+ years of a democrat governors and 40+ years both houses being controlled by democrats make CA republican lead?
Texas and California strike me as the sorts of states to one day just say "You know, fuck all y'all".
We do have a lot of nut jobs, particularly in low population rural states like Idaho, and they have ideas. One idea is to split off parts of California and Oregon into the state of Jefferson. Another was to split California into 6 states. All of these schemes just happen to give conservatives more power in the Senate, and are unlikely to ever happen.
I have no idea idea if California's peak is already in the past, but the trend isn't looking great.
When people start taking for granted, that's when they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Just some examples:
Prop 13[1] passed in 1978:
* requires a 2/3s majority in both chambers to raise tax rates * caps increases on property taxes to sub-inflation rates, incentivizes people to stay in their homes forever to keep their cheap rate * forces the state to rely more and more on income taxes, which are very unstable, so we see boom and bust years. CA will be coming up on a bust year now. * Shields home voters from any downside of their property value going up (higher tax rates you'd see in other states), so more incentive to NIMBY any new development in your neighborhood. * cities can get more tax revenue from commercial properties than residential so they are incentivized to build office buildings and not housing (see how well that's working out for San Francisco now)
Late 70s downzoning: * Across California many cities downzoned, severely limiting the height, density and types of housing that could be built. * I read the environmental impact report for the late 70s downzone of San Francisco and it specifically called out how this would increase housing costs unless the city significantly increased development in the industrial parts of the city. That didn't really happen, so here we are.
The proposition system in general * We vote on absolutely crazy things that I think should be left to legislators or bureaucrats. One thing that stood out to me as particularly weird was 2018 Prop 8[2] * This history of this system was to limit the power of the rail roads who'd bought many of the politicians, so it was a counter to a corrupt legislature. But then someone "innovated" and started paying people to collect signatures to get something on the ballot, and now it's used for all sorts of confusing and niche purposes.
In recent years we've been seeing actual progress on some of the housing related policy. I think organizations like CA YIMBY[3] get a ton of credit for that.
But I'm not sure what we'll do about Prop 13 or the proposition system in general. Prop 13 in general is kind of a 3rd rail in CA politics. But there has been some attempts to chip away at the edges that got close. 2020 Prop 15[4] came close to passing and would have addressed some of the issues in Prop 13 for commercial properties.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 [2] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_Limits_on_... [3] https://cayimby.org [4] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_15,_Tax_on_Co...
I think its very clear. There are actors that feeding into the hate because that fuels views/engagement to their platforms and keeps them in power.
Are there plans & budget to upgrade the infrastructure?
Are there plans & budget to replace/update/install/negotiate new source of electric power?
(asking as I am not Californian.)
In the mean time we get to pat ourselves on the back and feel good for ditching those icky internal combustion engines!
On a more serious note - and people wonder how we end up where things like this get so dire? Here we go again!
When would that time be? I get home from work after 17:00/5:00PM. Plug in my EV, and set the air conditioner to a few degrees lower. I get up and leave for work at 7:00. EV cars with Level 2 charging take from 5h (Mini SE Hardtop) to 12h (Tesla Model S). The average is 8.6h, and median at 8h. [0,1] At Level 1 charging, the charging time can take days, depending on the vehicle.
> According to California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the state’s electricity grid reaches its peak level of usage between the late afternoon and early evening – a time frame in which electricity produced by renewable resources is less available and thus costs more to produce. The peak demand period is generally defined as the hours between 4 to 9PM ... [1]
With the above details, with the best case scenario on timing & charging, that means I must not plug in my vehicle before 9:00PM, but have to before 10:30PM.
If California is hoping that people will plug in their vehicles "at the right time", that is not a re-assuring strategy.
[0] https://www.carcareportal.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-charg...
[1] https://www.carcovers.com/carresources/how-long-does-it-take...
[2] https://energyupgradeca.org/time-of-use-faqs
> Newsom’s order temporarily loosens environmental regulations on gas-burning power plants, allowing them to run full-tilt during the heat wave, which the governor said could last for a week.
> The call for conservation comes hours before state lawmakers are expected to decide the fate of the state’s largest power-generating facility: the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. The two atomic reactors -- the last remaining ones in the state -- are scheduled to close by the end of 2025.
When reality meets bullshit, reality wins. Always.