Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t observa; As California’s global warming ready energy grid of the future buckles under a heatwave, residents have been urged not to charge electric vehicles between 4-9pm.
Aug. 31, 2022
Contact: ISOMedia@caiso.com
California ISO issues Flex Alert for today, Aug. 31Extreme heat triggers urgent need to conserve electricity from 4 to 9 p.m.
FOLSOM, Calif. – The California Independent System Operator (ISO) has issued a statewide Flex Alert, a call for voluntary electricity conservation, for today, Aug. 31 from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., due to high temperatures pushing up energy demand and tightening available power supplies.
With excessive heat in the forecast across much of the state and Western U.S., the grid operator is expecting high electricity demand, primarily from air conditioning use, and is calling for voluntary conservation steps to help balance supply and demand.
Additional Flex Alerts are also possible through the Labor Day weekend as record- setting temperatures are forecast across much of the West.
In what’s likely to be the most extensive heat wave so far in the West this year, temperatures in Northern California are expected to be 10-20 degrees warmer than normal through Tuesday, Sept. 6. In Southern California, temperatures are expected to be 10-18 degrees warmer than normal. Death Valley is currently forecast to peak at 126 degrees on Saturday, which would tie the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth in the month of September.
Today’s Flex Alert is scheduled between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., when the grid is most stressed from higher demand and less solar energy. During that time, consumers are urged to conserve power by setting thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, if health permits, avoiding use of major applicances and turning off unnecessary lights. They should also avoid charging electric vehicles while the Flex Alert is in effect.
To minimize discomfort and help with grid stability, consumers are also encouraged to pre-cool their homes and use major appliances and charge electric vehicles and electronic devices before 4 p.m., when conservation begins to become most critical.
Reducing energy use during a Flex Alert can help stabilize the power grid during tight supply conditions and prevent further emergency measures, including rotating power outages.
…
Read more: http://www.caiso.com/Documents/california-iso-issues-flex-alert-for-today-aug-31.pdf
Last week California announced that from 2035, the sale of internal combustion vehicles will be banned. Just in case you think you can get around this insanity by using a home generator, last year California announced a ban on sales of gasoline powered stationary generators and emergency equipment.
Never let it be said WUWT is reluctant to share notices of public importance.
Wind and solar are not reliable, as California, Texas, and Germany will serve as examples.
Solar also not reliable.
As reported today by CNBC, listed below.
Interesting that the bad experience of Amazon with Solar was just reported today. Or maybe I did not see this before. Try it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/amazon-took-solar-rooftops-offline-last-year-after-fires-explosions.html
Rooftop solar
If you lose the mains supply and rely completely on roof top recharging of your home battery system, owners soon find out that from flat a tesla home battery needs mains supply to be recharged.
The only way to rely on rooftop solar as back-up generation IS to use it to charge/recharge a Battery Back-up system. Many/most utilities require that Rooftop Solar, if connected such that it can backfired into the grid (turn the meter backwards and have the utility pay you), must also disconnect during an outage. To prevent reenergizing the utility side into a faulted section (downed wire) and sparking fires.
30 or 40 years ago I was in a safety class presented by someone from the electric company.
He had a transformer like the ones you see on telephone poles. He plugged the low voltage side that would go to the house into an an electric outlet. He then cooked a hotdog across the high voltage terminals (grid side) in a few seconds flat.
He was demonstrating the importance of throwing your house main in a power outage if you run a home generator for the safety of those working on the lines to restore power.
You also have a problem with frequency control with batteries trying to feed a downed system. Imagine 25 homes trying to feed into a downed grid, all with slightly different frequencies. What will happen when the power company tries to link back in?
“…Commercial solar in the U.S. is expected to see 8% annual growth over the next five years, thanks in part to the legislation, according to Wood Mackenzie solar analyst Michelle Davis. Warehouses can take outsized advantage of solar, she said, because they have large roofs and the systems can power all the HVAC, refrigeration and other energy-heavy systems located inside.”
All? Even in Maryland and other states in the North, or in places like Seattle?
“…“But at Amazon, we don’t shy away from big challenges,” Hurst wrote, in the letter kicking off the 2021 sustainability report. “We don’t have all the answers today, but we believe in the need to act now.”
Translation: We don’t know what we’re doing. We haven’t been able to find or hire employees or contractors who do know what they’re doing but let’s Do Something to show how virtuous we are whether it’s a good idea, safe, or works or not.
>> thanks in part to the legislation
99.9% is “part”,after all.
I think every EV owner should start charging their boat anchors at 4PM…🇺🇸🇺🇸
California’s fault is one of a lack of generation CAPACITY to handle their draconian mandates and the fact that their preferred method of generation (renewables) is grossly incapable of powering the state’s current demand let alone with the addition of an electrified transportation EV mandate.
If you just go out and buy an electric car it will make things all better
When they tell us EVs must not be recharged at all, that could be a problem. But thank God for their ban on new gas cars by 2035, that’ll solve all problems.
Well the EV sales and marketing people have been issuing a subtle warning that EV can be used to power your home.
Does that mean that EV drivers need an internal combustion engine vehicle for transport?
Of course it will!
Because if you aren’t using petrol(gasoline) and you can’t charge your EV, then you are not causing pollution. Easies!
Good place to avoid.
Peak stupidity and defying commonsense.
Problem is, this insanity is apparently contagious and spreading, with no antiviral treatment available.
Reality is usually a good antidote.
Always works, eventually. Problem is, there are usually casualties as reality kicks in. Those will be mostly in New England, NYC, and CA here in US. Since WE in NorCal is well protected, not to worry.
An antidote appropriate to the ailment, I think.
Too often after hundreds of years
Unless you can find someone else to blame for your mistake and/or pay for it.
Regular doses of fentanyl have proven effective.
It’s kind of fun to watch from a distance, here in sane south Florida where FPL just finished installing 3 years ago 2 new 2400 MW each CCGT on sites formerly housing 2 very old 2000 MW dirty fuel oil fired steam units. Cleaner air, cheaper electricity, and more inherent peaking capacity than before (FPL shut down 6 old peakers when the CCGT came on line).
Yes. the old sites make perfect locations for new on demand generators
I was driving today on New Mexico hwy 285 south towards Roswell NM and off in the distance to the east and west (not too far from Clines coroners at Interstate 40) were wind farms. I couldn’t help but wonder how long are the tie ins to the grid and how do they service those monsters out in the middle of nowhere. Add the cost of all the infrastructure, materials in building them it just looks like insanity.
I was driving by probably those same wind mills a few years ago and wondering why so many were not turning.
One thing that influences that, I believe, is the high cost of cranes required for some repairs. Rather than rent a crane for each individual repair, I think farms wait for a number of them to have failed in order to amortize the rental cost.
I’m not so sure we’ve hit peak stupidity yet
Britain is leading the pack in peak stupidity at the moment. It’s good to know that we are world leaders at something.
Just a preview of what’s coming to CA:
My domestic rate is already charged different costs at different times and by using ripple control they can cut off hot water only when they wish.- normally in cycles of say 20 min to reduce peak loads in local networks and sometimes for the grid. Those who wish can pay a flat rate and continuous hot water power for a much higher rate.
Our utility in the US has different plans to choose from. Ours, so far, can’t cut off electricity to anything– yet. They started installing Smart Meters a number of years ago, long before the government got so bad and overbearing but my gut told me not to do it. However, they pushed smart meters hard. I refused to have one installed and pay a very small monthly charge for not having one. I’m very glad I didn’t. My gut was right.
Our electricity primarily comes from nuclear, thank God! California pays us, and other states, to take their electricity when their windmills and solar make too much electricity, and, then, when they don’t make enough, they buy electricity from us. Fine by me but a bad deal for California rate-payers.
There’s no reason for Calif. to have to cut anyone’s electricity or to have this problem. They shut down all but one of their perfectly good and very clean, zero-emission nuclear plants in favor of land/habitat hogging bird slicing and/or roasting windmills and solar arrays miles from population centers necessitating hundreds of miles of new transmission lines, many through, forests which their utility cannot properly maintain and which do and have caused massive forest fires and loss of life.
As far as that goes, the UK, Germany and France would not have to worry about electricity supplies or cost, or Russia if they had not shut down their nuclear plants.
Stupid!
Ripple control doesn’t need a smart meter. It’s quite old tech but does need a compatible device inside the meter box and the wiring to switch off hot water. It’s a good idea as hot water is a stored system in most homes and the demand is say 3kW , a worthwhile amount to remove per household
I have a natural gas water heater. Let’s see’em try to turn it off!
Does Putin know about this?
“In addition, all home installed UK electric vehicle chargers are required to be separately metered and send this information to a Smart meter data communications network.”
*********
Big Brother is watching you. And there probably won’t be any switch to shut off the “telescreen”.
So there’s no guarantee you will have a working vehicle for your morning commute
The electricity used to charge EVs needs to be taxed in parity with motor fuel. In Ontario, Canada, this is 32 Canadian cents per litre, not counting carbon taxes but counting the VAT embedded in the after-tax price. Separate metering is a good idea to make sure EVs pay the same driving tax as ICE cars, while not whacking residential users of electricity who don’t drive a car.
Announce them before they happen! This is how the climate change industry and its fellow-travellers in the media make sure that “unprecedented” high temperatures get fixed in the public consciousness. If nature fails to cooperate, don’t expect a retraction or an apology.
The highest ever September temperature? They were probably looking for 126 degrees C.
They also use ‘normal’ as if that is the temp to be expected and anything different is abnormal and to be feared.
It’s like this when everything runs under thermostats. Hmm. Space tourists?
Ah yes, the great subjective normal ( opinion only) versus above/below average
(objective facts)
There is a lot to fix isn’t there.
The current official highest registered air temperature on Earth is 56.7 °C (134.1 °F), recorded on 10 July 1913 at Furnace Creek Ranch, in Death Valley in the United States.
The CA electricity thing is bigger and deeper than just this heat wave. Today the CA legislature passed by more than 2/3 majority a bill to keep Diablo Canyon (2 reactor nuc originally scheduled to close in 2025) open until 2030 via a $1.4 billion loan (bribe) that CA hopes will be paid by US (not CA) under some provision that lapses Sept 5. Greens are howling.
Problem is, CA has no dispatchable replacement planned for when old Diablo Canyon finally does close. The legislature just kicked the can 5 years down the road.
They plan to replace it with more of the low density, intermittent renewables that created the current problem.
They have a plan. It’s just not a very good one!
And if that does not work, well it was just because they did not do ENOUGH of it, so it still was not their fault.
The real plan is reduce electricity consumption overall ( like they want with cars and petrol). The ‘low density renewables’ is just a policy smokescreen.
Its called ‘starve the beast’ and has been around for decades in other forms , California did it previously for local government ( prop 13 , 1978)
Proposition 13 was not a government action, it was a ballot initiative proposed and passed by the general population. The reason was government gone wild, raising property taxes four times a year and forcing people out of their homes left and right for not being able to pay the taxes/
The author of Prop. 13 was Howard Jarvis. His other claim to fame? He was the passenger in the taxi in the movie “Airplane”.
In Colorado during the recent heat an energy provider locked their customers out of adjusting their ‘smart’ thermostats and when confronted said “read the fine print, you could have opted out”!
Easy fix, just place a lit candle under your thermostat.
This is a variant of the same sort of deal large commercial customers have been offered for years. If I had to guess, most of them are probably unaware of the potential consequences as well.
A scary common element here is the ability of someone, somewhere, to decide when you’ll drive, whether you’ll be hot or cold, and what you can and can’t do at various times of the day. People are rapidly becoming part of a “power” grid.
All of them unelected bureaucrats who will keep using fossil fuels every day, while the peasants go without.
Electricity grid always had this feature, as the demand and supply has to be matched at every moment.
Mostly its a smooth change by using such features as brownouts or ripple control to cut out non essential use. Blackouts are also a feature as the other choices have already been used or the need is instantaneous.
Having an unstable grid is to avoided at all cost as thats a pathway to near complete blackout, which is what Texas went through winter or two back
Brownouts are not a “feature”, they are an indicator of not having enough generation to meet demand.
Whether you will live or die.
Whether electric lights will be be permitted to operate during critical surgeries; whether electricity will be available to power the dialysis machine on which some life depends; etc., etc., etc.
Green energy is revealing it’s problems during heat waves and all who visit WUWT know the problems with Green Energy & Lithium Batteries during cold waves.
When will the ‘woke’ wake up?
Something not often mentioned is that The Green New Deal’s unsustainable grid power also effects public utilities.
I worked at a large water plant. (Average production about 75 MGD.) We did an annual test where we had to cut our power, and therefore our production, to a bare minimum. We were given warning the test was coming so we’d run full out to fill our clearwells and distribution water tanks before we had to cut back. The consumers never noticed.
This was not in California so all the Green BS has not hit us as hard.
In other words, if your state has caved to GBS, when your power goes out and it wasn’t a planned, you may lose water also.
Let’s ban gas vehicles at the same time not let anyone charge their electric ones.
Communism at it’s best in California. And it will get worse.
Worse?? It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!!
When saving the planet, which is the only agenda California has, “worse” is not a concern.
The only alternative is to leave.
Walk out now, before they ban feet.
LA passed legislation, back in the 1970s I believe, that no one could move out of the city without special permission. Fortunately the courts made them eat it but, hey, that was just the first try.
Within the past few years, CA was trying to push some sort of continued tax, where they would continue to collect tax from you after moving to another state. Not sure what happened with that (and I don’t really remember the details). But I’m sure they’ll keep trying.
Nonsense. Buy a horse.
Horses fart, so they will also get banned eventually.
So everyone must cook dinner before 4PM or wait until after 9PM. I wonder if the restaurant association had a hand in the times.
Yes, especially since CA won’t let new houses get natural gas service installed. That outdoor charcoal barbeque isn’t going to be a luxury anymore, but a necessity.
For how long do you expect to be able to buy charcoal?
I can see entrepreneurs running the Cali border at night, bringing in loads of desperately needed charcoal
Obviously, gang green leads to brain cancer.And you can’t treat stupid.
Remember the wind and Sun are free.
But the delivery charge… oh that delivery charge!
Yeah, and The Guardian prides itself on its “Comment is Free” policy providing your comment doesn’t contain anything that goes against the narrative.
I’ve always read that as meaning that your comment is free to be deleted if we don’t like it.
California’s ban on “emergency electricity generating equipment” should give a boost to emergency hospital admissions. Extending the ban on charging electric vehicles would provide an opportunity for Californians to do more walking.
Ha. Have you ever been to California? They have drive-thru walk-in clinics.
Ah, we’ve finally arrived at the ultimate public transit solution: sidewalks.
Californians are instructed to eat only omelets after 2035. No more meat, fish, cheese, or organic arugula. But if you break eggs to make those omelets, you go to prison for life.
The World Economic Forum says lithium “global reserves are sufficient to produce just under 2.5 billion batteries. The IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 roadmap says the world will need 2 billion battery electric, plug‐in hybrid and fuel-cell electric light‐duty vehicles on the road by that date to hit net zero”. So we just have enough lithium to get there, the bit they leave out is batteries have a limited lifespan 10-20 years depending on who you believe, so they all have to be replaced. We will run out of lithium well before 2050.
Net-Zero implies we are going to be removing CO2 from the atmosphere at scale, like 20 gigatonnes a year, by 2050. Not going to happen since we don’t know if any tech to do it will actually work. So they are really trying to hit Gross-Zero.
Ouch.
Mods
IkeepgettingtheboldetciconsashugesquareswhenItrytopostandallmytypingrunstogetherdespiteusingthespacebarand I have to go through it all again to separate the words.Anyideaofhowicanresolvethis?
Type slower
Simonsays:Its.a.glitch.with.the.site.and.certain.browsers..the.input.box.deletes.spaces.as.you.type.
Thanks. I use Firefox but the last two days are the first time in three years that I have encountered this problem. Today as you can tell it has not happened!
Now that’s PUNCTUAL
“Residents have been urged not to charge electric vehicles between 4-9pm.” HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa good one !
What ?
You’re serious ?
Yep
California doesn’t have the current generation capacity necessary to handle the current load demand from EVs recharging during peak demand times on hot days let alone the potential increased load of their mandated EV fiasco set for just 8 years hence.
It takes years to site, license and construct generation capacity and Newsome has only 8 remaining until 2030 EV mandates kick in
When the water crisis becomes a slight bit more challenging than it currently is, California will be issuing guidelines on legal hours to use the bathroom.
Time for passive aggression: turn up your AC, turn on every appliance, every TV, computer, every light, and if you have an EV plug it in.
Time to “heighten the contradictions” and bring down the system.
Like I do during Earth Hour every year.
I’d say for ALL Californians to go out now and buy a plug in EV and plug them all in at once…prove the Dumb-O-Crat Green Renewable folly.
Problem is, there isn’t enough available to sell one to every CA household
Smart people would stress test massive changes to mission critical infrastructure before fully committing to it.
California is not smart.
No, they’re not smart; but they have voluntarily embarked on the demonstration project we’ve all been waiting for. I hope they’re keeping good records of excess deaths.
“temperatures in Northern California are expected to be 10-20 degrees warmer than normal through Tuesday, “
This is the definition of thought control via language control. It will be warmer than “average”, not warmer than “normal”.
Every temperature experienced in california this week is “normal”.
Catch-22. We have electricity to charge your EV. But if you charge your EV we have no electricity.
OooooKAY. Got it.
Dave Walsh (War Room) mentioned So. Cal gets about 30% of their clean energy from Arizona solar farms, which stop working when the sun reaches low angles while setting. Most Cal. EVs are stuck in rush hour traffic at 4PM. Whose bright idea was this, anyway?
For all of this summer, KFBK AM in Sacramento has been running ads that translate to, “Get off work, go home, and then sweat and starve in the dark”. This just adds not charging EVs to the list.
If the state colluded with the EV makers, can they simply disable the car? Maybe set a permissible travel area that gets adjusted based on your social score, or political views?
Yup:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/09/01/california-urges-residents-not-to-charge-evs-after-4pm/#comment-3591536
Well, as far as solar being reliable in California, note the two attached graphs, showing daily mean solar output in MW from the CASIO website for Jan and June 2022.
ASSUMING vast battery backup to cover the 12 hours per day when the sun doesn’t shine, June 2022 doesn’t look too bad. You just need to increase solar power by an order of magnitude or something, and, you’re good to go. Only about 1/5th or so of power in CA is consumed currently as electricity. That will change.
Jan 2022 (the top graph), doesn’t look quite so good. Either you’ll have to import the electricity or double up again on your solar power and battery storage.
This renewable power stuff is only for numerically illiterate people.
California DOES import power and water from out of state.
The Chief Executive of Australia’s now Federal Government wholly owned Snowy Hydro Electricity has resigned following disagreement with the new Labor Government Minister who refused to accept that planned gas fuelled electricity generators cannot be fuelled with green hydrogen because that technology is not commercially viable and not likely to be in the foreseeable future.
California ‘in a nutshell’.
Or they could fire up some fossil fuel and nuclear plants. These people are dumb as rocks, makes me sick.
Why just from 4 till 9
Why not over all of the winter as is coming soon to the UK.
Simply because there will be nowhere to go, in your electric crap-mobile.
Then good ol’ Jack Frost will get in and wreck its battery while it waits for spring.
This size/sort of disaster could hardly have been actually planned any better that how it’s unfolding
BBC Headline:“Restaurants will just close until spring – Tom Kerridge
Right now “4 to 9” means you can’t charge your EV between 4pm and 9pm. By 2035, when EV charging demands vastly exceed generation capacity, “4 to 9” will mean you can’t charge your EV from April to September.
shame
arnie, pierce brosnan and all the other sierra club boys should have the EVs confiscated as they wont be able to help themselves and they will either do it anyway or start their home generators and add massive GHGs
The UK is hot on their heels
Cook dinner after 8pm, wash your clothes at morning or night and turn off your lights if the WIND doesn’t blow: Experts warn Britons could face energy rationing to avoid blackouts at Christmas – as ministers draw up plans to ‘dim the lights’ this winter
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11170419/Families-asked-ration-energy-use-WIND-doesnt-blow-avoid-blackouts.html
“I’m dreaming of a “brown” Christmas ….”
Doesnt anyone believe that new car dealers in California will stay and sell new cars after 2035? Most will move across the border to other stats and sell ICE vehicles that would be driven right back across state lines for use in California (unless they have already put laws in the books that this will be illegal at that time) Oops, I just gave California a way to stop that – never mind!
Why don’t they play with the charging structure?
For me the cost of charging my EV is halved between 1:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m and I’ve set the car up to charge between those times. If I plug it in at 4:00 p.m it delays charging to 1:00 a.m. I can over ride it but normally don’t unless it is very sunny and i’m exporting a lot of power from rooftop solar
Walking is good for one’s health, so its all in a good cause.
I suffer mightily with procrastination, but I’ve absolutely got to get a note off to Gavin Newsom thanking him for this enlightening demonstration project.
But doesn’t everyone who has an electric car have a solar panel covered car port to change their cars during the day when they are at work?
Watch out don’t trip over or run over the extension cord.
If you are parked in a large, Democrat-run city you probably won’t have to worry. Sooner or later the criminals will get around to scooping up all the extension cords to sell on the black market!
More Califonia in a nushell.
I was flying from SF to DC to retire. Sitting next to me in first class was another old engineer with a physical understanding of the world. He had a job with a big Santa Clara Valley company. His job was to explain to computer engineers that code they write still had to follow follow the laws of physics.
I did not think he was going to a very good job but did not say that.
This ‘tech’ company in the silcon valley put solar panels on the roof and annouced that they were going to show the power industry how to replace coal with solar.
When I read books by Jack London his descripion of the Santa Clara Valley reminded me of my boyhood memories. All that has been replaced by roofs and freeways.
I also grew up in other places where I have memories of warning not to fall through the ice and die.
Generaly people in Califonia are clueless about the enviroment and there is not penalty because life is easy. It is a culture domiated by 4wd pickups where it never snows.
‘Icing’ is parking your 4wd pu infront of an EV charging station.
I’m sure that somewhere in this insane nation “Woke Physics” is in development.
I can’t figure out why the geniuses pushing all-electric vehicles haven’t discovered the benefits of plug-in hybrids that take advantages of the best features of battery powered motors AND the internal combustion engine. In a situation like this, the PHEV owner simply switches to gasoline mode. Also, no need for an extensive array of highway EV chargers. PHEVs only require a battery that is one fourth the size of the pack used in a Bolt or a Tesla. You get the benefits of high efficiency electric driving for your daily commute and you have your trusty ICE on standby for any other trip.
It’s called ideological blindness.
I don’t think it’s blindness. I think they ARE aware of the benefits of PHEV and don’t WANT it. Less control of the people that way.