In LA temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 32C (90F) on Monday and 36C (97F) on Wednesday. (They call this a heat wave?)
But gas is running so short that Californians are being asked to turn off non-essential lights and not use their biggest appliances from 5 pm to 9 pm.
Welcome to the future, where you need to plan ahead to run your washing machine or oven.
Back in the dark ages when we had coal plants, we just switched these things on hither, thither…
California power grid urges consumers to conserve energy in heat wave
(Reuters) – California’s power grid operator on Monday issued an alert to homes and businesses to conserve electricity on Tuesday and Wednesday when a heat wave is expected to blanket the state.
SoCalGas issued a gas curtailment watch on Monday, notifying customers to be prepared to reduce gas use if needed… the watch would remain in effect until further notice.
The ISO said consumers “can help avoid power interruptions” by turning off all unnecessary lights, using major appliances before 5 p.m. and after 9 p.m., and setting air conditioners to 78 degrees or higher.
By 2020 California may get as much as 33% of its energy from renewables (they are not far behind South Australia).
Indeed, the solar sector is on “fire” producing as much as 50% of total demand on at least one day at 1 pm last year.
Luckily, to get solar to peak at 7 pm when it would be useful, they just need to legislate a plus-six-hour daylight savings plan, or keep the same time zone and move California 90 degrees West.
If they adopt UTC-2 (instead of UTC-8) Californians will be three hours ahead of New York and share time zones with the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands and pretty much no one else.)
It’s a small price to pay to save the planet.
Read more at JoNova
I would bet the utilities are as frustrated with political meddling and the eco anarchists
so the best thing may be these rolling black outs to get the dip shit politicians booted out of office and to tell the eco anarchists to bugger off .
Most people go about their daily lives oblivious and trusting that public officials will
look after their interests . Well hello black outs !
instead the geniuses of California have peed away billions on an incomplete railway .
When Hollywood can’t cool their mansions the real shit will hit the fan .
The article is so right in saying this is the wave of the future, at least for the nations and states stupid enough to go for wind and solar power. If a high percentage of power comes from these sources, it isn’t there when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. The sun doesn’t shine every night and hot weather often means still air. In addition to the high cost of renewable energy, it also results in an unreliable energy grid.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a future where expensive power meters, paid for by the consumer, would be installed to limit power when the grid was having problems.
It already happens in CA, it happened to me, smart meters that is… I bought a home a few years ago in a beach town in Orange County, it was one that had A/C which is not the norm along the coast. Anyway, the next summer after moving in, there was a small heatwave and I needed to use the A/C. But it refused to kick on consistently. I called an HVAC guy to come check it out, and he told me about a small box installed on the side of the compressor, he said it was a smart meter that Edison had placed there to manage when power could flow to the A/C. He told me that it cost an extra 5 bucks a month for this “service”, so I looked at my bill and couldn’t find it. It turned out the previous owner had subscribed to this “service” but Edison never deactivated it when he terminated his account.
The idea wouldn’t be totally disgusting if Edison was truly implementing the power cut during a bona fide grid alert, but this was a continuous system of preventing the A/C working at just the hottest time of the afternoon, regardless of the weather.
The HVAC guy said it was simple for him to rewire the power to bypass the unit since I wasn’t paying for it. Now the A/C works on demand, without fail.
Why dont all liberal Eco-Wackos do us all a big favor and kept their pieholes closed for all those days to cut back on the Hot Air