Why does California still struggle with electricity?

[Guest]

I get the whole Enron situation of the late 90s/early 00s, but I don’t get how 20 years later they haven’t solved the issues. Any good articles on what’s going on there?

[stepee]

Does @Mr.Vic20 live in California? Could be his gaming pc.

[Mr.Vic20]

5 minutes ago, stepee said:

Does @Mr.Vic20 life in California? Could be his gaming pc.

I leech all my power from Cornell University in upstate NY!  Cornell produces so much power that it sells it back to the grid, and the local area benefits from relatively cheap power.

[Mr.Vic20]

30 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I get the whole Enron situation of the late 90s/early 00s, but I don’t get how 20 years later they haven’t solved the issues. Any good articles on what’s going on there?

I've worked in utilities construction for roughly 10 years so I know a little. What I've learned is that everyone robs the utilities budget for "associated" work. Additionally, I would imagine that California, being a massively big state probably has a huge problem with aging infrastructure that, surprise, probably hasn't been funded properly in forever.  No one gives a shit about utilities until they break. You can't get elected by promising to pour money into infrastructure or utilities UNTIL enough misery and horror happens. People give it lip service, but time and time again its neglected. 

[TwinIon]

I don't really get the impression that CA struggles that much with power. We have possible planned outages during these extreme heat waves, but that's pretty rare.

 

Here's a rundown of CA energy production.

 

If there's a real issue, I'd say that it comes from the State's attempts to curb consumption and reluctance to use non-renewable energy. I don't know what the current state of new power plant construction is, but I know that individual utilities have had to meet increasing percentages of power from renewables. You can see here how much we've recently increased reliance on solar in particular:

 

That's come primarily at the expense of natural gas nuclear (following the closure of San Onofre).

 

I imagine that the renewable requirements are a pretty significant factor in CA buying so much electricity from out of state, but that's just a guess.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

No matter the stated reason for these most recent outages(fire and high winds), the simple fact is California is, like (nearly?) all other states, wholly unequipped to deal with a changing climate.

[cusideabelincoln]

After the blackouts a few weeks ago, articles mentioned,

 

A)  California has invested more into renewables (solar) than they have in other technologies over the last 20 years, and importantly the trade off came at the expense of maintaining and keeping open some nuclear power plants that would have covered the loss of power from solar when...

 

B) There was a massive and extended cloud obstruction due to the tropical storm, reducing solar output for the state.  When lack of solar output happened previously they would simply borrow power from neighboring states, but since the cloudiness and heat covered a wider area than California those other states needed the power for themselves.

 

C) A gas power plant had an untimely maintenance schedule that shut it down, and could have covered (much of) the lack of solar output.

 

So their investment into Wind+Solar failed to take into account a climate that would affect them and their neighboring states, and they didn't have proper backup power output in place.

[Guest]

I heard an NPR news hit just now that had some energy economists say one issue is the reliance on solar without a means to store power, which is why the window for when they want reductions has moved from the traditional 4-7pm to a later time as they lose generation capacity as the sun goes down. Seems like a multitude of issues that will need solutions, particularly given a changing climate.

[Jason]

I think we've been shutting down nuclear without replacing it.

[Remarkableriots]

36 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I heard an NPR news hit just now that had some energy economists say one issue is the reliance on solar without a means to store power, which is why the window for when they want reductions has moved from the traditional 4-7pm to a later time as they lose generation capacity as the sun goes down. Seems like a multitude of issues that will need solutions, particularly given a changing climate.

 

[Keyser_Soze]

I think it was originally because we were paying for power from out of state.

[CitizenVectron]

Wow.

 

 

[mclumber1]

It was a mistake to shut down California's nuclear power capability.  Honestly, they shouldn't (years ago) built one or two more nuke plants and pair them with solar and wind.  

 

Mistakes were made.