Chris White Tech Reporter August 17, 2020 8:57 PM ET
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state’s transition away from fossil fuels is a contributing factor to the state’s rolling blackouts.
The elimination of fossil fuel products as a major form of energy production and the shift to solar power and other forms of green energy has led to what Newsom called “gaps” in the energy grid’s reliability, the Democratic governor said during a press conference Monday.
Newsom addressed the sudden loss of power many Californians experienced Saturday and Sunday during high temperatures.
“We are not backing off on that commitment,” Newsom said, referring to California’s push to transition away from oil and gas.
“In the process of the transition, in the process of shutting down, understandably, the desire and need to shut down polluting gas plants … comes the need to have more insurance, comes the need to recognize that there have been — by definition, demonstrably, in the last few days and what we expect over the next few days — gaps in terms of that reliability,” Newsom said.
The state’s energy system operator — California Independent System Operator (CAISO) — issued a Stage 3 emergency for the first time in 20 years, per a press statement CAISO posted Friday. Many citizens were required to conserve as much energy as possible while others were subject to rotating power outages due to heavy strain on the energy grid, CNN reported Monday.
“Collectively, energy regulators failed to anticipate this event and to take necessary actions to ensure reliable power to Californians,” Newsom wrote in a letter Monday to CAISO, CNN reported. “This cannot stand.” (RELATED: Here’s How State Regulators Played A Role In California’s Rolling Blackouts, Wildfires)
CAISO attributed the blackouts to the unexpected loss of a 470 megawatt power plant, as well as a loss of nearly 1,000 megawatts from wind power. The nonprofit’s emergency order allowed utilities to use backup energy to relieve pressure on a grid that relies primarily on a mixture of wind and solar power, along with hydro power.https://aff529feed2f91a49f5b59a2778570f0.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
“Near certain we’ll be forced to ask the utilities to cut off power to millions today to balance supply and demand. Today and tomorrow and perhaps beyond,” Steve Berberich, president and CEO of CAISO, said in a statement Monday before noting that the nonprofit corporation has repeatedly warned of a reliability gap and that the state will have to increase energy production.
Newsom said Monday that the transition from fossil fuels is a “moral and ethical imperative as it relates to the kind of world we’re going to leave, the kind of state and nation we’re going to leave for our kids and grandkids.”
Sierra Club and other activists met informally with Newsom’s administration in 2019 to discuss dramatically slashing the state’s oil production, The Los Angeles Times reported in April of that year.
“I’m taking a very pragmatic look at it, in scoping this,” Newsom told The LA Times in a 2019 interview. “It’s also an inclusive scoping because it includes people in the industry, that have jobs; communities that are impacted from an environmental justice prism but also from an economic justice prism.”
California has 72,000 oil wells and the oil industry supports 368,000 jobs in the Golden State, according to the Western States Petroleum Association.
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Question for the experts: do the rolling blackouts include Silicon Valley? How are the Big Techs coping?
My understanding (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that Twits, FaceCrook, Gaggle, and others have dispersed their workforce due to the Bat Flu. All their keystrokers are working from home, but the homes are blacked out now. So the Mighty Engine of Bits and Bite Me’s is choking on its own liberal hubris.
Or not — I don’t know because I don’t live there (please inform me). We have excess hydro power where I live — buuut we’re not about to sell it CA because our libs are tearing down our dams. Whoops!
What I find amazing is that virtually all power grids worldwide (not just California) have “just enough” capacity with no planning for a healthy reserve, say 20% or 30% above peak demand in case of major failures etc. and for anticipated growth of demand as the economy grows. China seems to be the only exception to this with hundreds of coal fired plants under construction as part of a long term plan.
To have “just enough” is courting disaster and shows no foresight, especially when presiding over a transformation to green energy with proven shortcomings.
Most of today’s politicians in the west will have a lot to answer for on this issue as the California experience is repeated in many, many places over the next few years.
Ken,
The healthy reserve is usually OCGT they ramp up very quickly to provide additional generation upon request and usually come at a high cost. In Adelaide they have come across a cunning plan of using wind/solar plus inter connector from Victoria for supply and diesel generators for back up. During summer the gens run quite often spewing copious amounts of CO2 as they go
Grids did not have “just enough” capacity prior to widespread adoption of renewables. There used to be a 20-25% overcapacity rule of thumb for grids to allow for maintenance down time and unexpected incidents.
The problem is that the subsidies enjoyed by renewables (including priority market access) which keep them economically viable also serve to undermine thermal generators especially those with inflexible operating profiles and low but largely fixed operating costs. With enough of these closing down, you end up with “just enough” capacity for normal times, excluding renewables.
Of course, the general public are sold the notion that renewable capacity is equivalent to thermal capacity (& at nameplate rating) so they don’t understand how precarious their grid is when conditions are unfavourable.
Something not right here.
Firstly a grid does not operate at maximum output, ever. There is always reserve, always.
Secondly they had been shutting down plants because renewables were being connected.
This is where the ignorance or dishonesty kicks in.
Wind turbines do not produce any useable 60Hz energy, they are useless.
PV solar cannot power the grid and for that purpose are useless.
This means that when plants were being shut down they were getting closer and closer to no reserve.
Then what, a 470MW plant goes down, no reserve, nothing.
They blame lack of wind and no sunshine. Wrong. The problem is, no reserve.
The wind turbines and PV solar were never powering the grid.
The problems will only get worse. More and longer blackouts to come.
The whole industry has to be exposed for the ignorance or the corruption which exists.
It’s not the industry that’s corrupt and ignorant. It’s the government.
Amen, Brother!!!
On the ignorant side, it’s the “sheeple”. Big time. Just ask anyone (from a distance, of course), on your daily walk around the neighborhood (you get more exercise?):). I ask. Many blame it on evil corporations (PG&E here). Sigh! Ignorance is bliss.
The politicians are not concerned with facts. They deal in belief. They believe green is the answer. If it doesn’t work, the reason cannot be a fault with green. The fault must lie with the opposition. Or the regulators. Or big business. Or the banks. Or Trump.
Unfortunately it has to get worse before it gets better.
The only thing that will discredit the climate change cult is failure and more failure, until even nice liberal gentry women with #WeBelieve yard-signs in their front yards realize that something is wrong.
“When Prophecy Fails” by Festinger et al. is a book about a UFO cult around 1950. Even when the prophecy fails, the faithful still believe. For a while. You can look it up on Wiki.
“Gaps” — An accountant would call those non-performing assets.
Just wait until 2025 when they decommission Diablo Canyon, and by extension lose the economical baseload generation to drive the Helms pumped storage facility at night. PG&E created a very elegant system with these assets that has delivered 3.5GW of fully dispatchable, economic, and carbon free power for over 4 decades, and they are simply going to flush it down the toilet out of vanity. Dumb. Very dumb.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms_Pumped_Storage_Plant
My fear: those who escape from California (and Oregon and Washington) will come here to Arizona. They will bring (actually they are bringing) their crazy politics with them…. they will then vote for the same crazy people that made CA a third world country. Then we (in AZ ) will also have rolling blackouts because those people will then push for the crazy policies that made them LEAVE CA…. I don’t know how to educate these crazy peoples. But no one else seems to know either….. sigh.
Impacts from social justice prisms he says. Ouch.
You can plan for 470MW loss (reserve) but you cant plan a for 1GW loss, this happened in Alice Springs not that long ago, a big cloud rolled in generation fell through the floor, the gas turbines kicked in but it only takes a few micro seconds for the frequency to drop and system black is the result.
The inquiry blamed the gas plant operators because their back up systems could not, to use a CA phrase “cover the gaps” thus allowing the fantasy of free energy to be perpetuated once again.
The same will happen in CA because free energy must work, it just must and by hell or high water it will.
“Collectively, energy regulators failed to anticipate this event and to take necessary actions to ensure reliable power to Californians”
In the past this Energy Regulator would put out the call to other power generation sources that are connected to this California “GRID”. The Canadian province of British Columbia has a number of hydro installations and depending on the water levels in their reservoirs the company BC Hydro had been able to supply power to California.
During the ENRON driven power grid shortages in 2000 and 2001 BC Hydro had stepped up and purposely ran their reservoirs down to supply power to California in this crisis. The rates that BC Hydro was to get on the spot market were quite worth the using up of a lot of the reserves of water to make a tidy profit on these power sales. Everyone knows that once a Kilowatt of energy is sent down the line there is NO getting it back so all transactions are on the honor system. On thing that California did not do was to honor these power sales with a timely payment. They took the energy companies to court and accused them of manipulation and price gouging. ENRON was found guilty of purposely shutting down power generators and supply grids to cause a power “PROBLEM” in California which in turn drove the power prices on the spot market to almost 4 times the normal. As a result BC Hydro was stiffed for $450 Million dollars in export power sales and they had some issues keeping their own customers supplied because of the reduced reservoir levels. BC Hydro was not complicit in these decisions to hobble the power grid and was only responding to the power sales call on the spot market.
So when California goes looking for power on the spot market today DO NOT expect BC Hydro to answer the call as they were burned once by these Democrat charlatans even though there is excess capacity in the BC Hydro system for a few years to come.
Not only was BC Hydro (Powerex) stiffed for $450 Mil, it also repaid $750 Mil to avoid a potential $3.2 Billion California court judgement.
“BC Hydro subsidiary Powerex agreed Friday to pay $750 million to avoid a $3.2 billion court judgment.”
“The settlement, pending approval by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, will see Powerex pay US$273 million cash and $477 million in credit.”
California is a massive corrupt criminal state, using its Justice Dept to do its dirty work. Kumala Harris who was elected AG in 2010 was behind this settlement that was finally reached in 2013. Powerex, who is a subsidiary of BC Hydro just decided to pay it instead of paying massive legal bills for another 5 years fighting it and chalked it up to a trade dispute. It was a mafia style shakedown.
https://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/08/16/Powerex-Settlement/
You can’t have “gaps in reliability”. It is either reliable or it is unreliable. In the case of wind and solar, it is unreliable – always.
The guy is a certified idiot. Where are the men in white coats when you need them?
I’m sure AOC knows how to fix that.
Indeed. Since computers and email require electricity, she’ll suggest that we buy stamps and send letters.
California should be encouraged to go greener & get rid of ALL politically incorrect energy supplies asap.
This will allow the civil unrest / civil war (when was war ever civil ? ) to start earlier rather than later & the ‘really pi$$ed off’ can beat the living daylight out of the ‘truly woke’ .
The rest of the world can sit back & observe nature at work (survival of the fittest) & decide if they want to continue down the jolly green road… or change tack.
For those of us thousands of miles away looking on we watch California’s self imposed pain with disbelief.
How can the most populous state the most prosperous state the most blessed state for resources and thinkers who have evolved whole world leading industries be reduced to turning off the power because they have not got enough to go around?!!
We are told California only generates 50% of its own electrical power demand in state, yet it is determined to close down reliable nuclear and fossil fuel fired gas plants that give steady in state supply 24/7.
Are those in political charge of decision making, completely mad in California?
We are talking about the USA here.
It is not Venezuela, it is not North Korea, yet here is a whole state within the USA committing totalitarian economic suicide, for nothing? Nothing, beyond dogmatic Green belief that CO2 is counterproductive to civilisation and world security.
Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.
I share your sentiment, Rod.
Radical Democrats live on a different planet.
So in the woke and socially just California, the rich will have their household diesel generators powering their air conditioners and recharging their Teslas (Teslae?). But the poor will live in the dark, without heating or cooling, and not allowed natural gas to cook with. There is something truly evil about the leftist mindset.
What says the population of CA ?
Are they happy with their green energy ?
They got the government they elected. Tough S&*t!
I was recently prescribed statins, but they made me feel unwell. So with agreement from my doctor I stopped taking them, and now I feel better.
I’m glad I don’t have a doctor with Governor Newsom’s approach, as the advice would have been ‘Double the dose and take this other pill for the side effects’.
It’s scary how fixation on an idea can blind people to reality.
Zero mention of California power blackouts on the CNN and BBC left-media sewage farms. Silence.
Nothing but endless fawning over Biden-Harris, sniping at Trump and recycling of the Death Valley high temperature fake-record story.
Gosh just think how much worse this could have been if we weren’t talking about the failures of a developed green technology as opposed to the the potential failure of an under-developed Green energy scam.
I thought wind was always supposed to blow somewhere; a bit like the constant hot air spouted by wind energy clown advocates.
If these morons actually knew anything about power technology, they would know that using 16th century ind technology is just plain stupid and doesn’t even achieve any reduction of atmospheric carbon. Apparently being moral and ethical means being ignorant of the future of power generation, whihc does NOT include environmentally obnoxious wind, or solar either. Molten salt nuclear reactors are the future, at least in the real world that lies outside of the state of Oz called California. I guess its appropriate that a govt that makes as many stupid decisions as California’s is headed by a blithering idiot.
If you are a conservative in CA, then I would urge you to leave, because of high taxes, poor grid, high housing costs, and your vote not counting.
I understand some people have various personal reasons for not being able to leave, but I urge them to take a second look and see if it is all possible to leave.
I spoke to family that recently moved to Texas. They vote conservative and said they were able to get much nicer house by selling house in CA and buying new hime in Texas due to CA housing prices being so high.
Those “gaps” are only there because he created them. What a smarmy weasel word generator.
I am guessing he sees it as just a capacity issue also and has no clue what and expensive , unstable house of cards he continues to build.
No vision, no plan just piecemeal decisions driven by virtue signalling, political cycles and extracting subsidies from the Feds where available. History repeating around the world.
An apposite quote from a true world statesman, a friend of the USA and a defender of freedom and democracy.
“I avail myself with relief of the opportunity of speaking to the people of the United States. I do not know how long such liberties will be allowed. The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains”.
Winston Churchill
He could have made that statement this weekend
Winston Churchill, was no dreamer.
I don’t see what the problem is here!
They’re just ahead of the mass exodus curve a bit. Demand will eventually drop below supply of things keep going the way they have been