Month: September 2022
PBS, NBC, on California Grid, Record Heat and Record Demand
Above, Wall Street Journal energy reporter has reasonable take.
The near term energy transition made more challenging by increasing climate – driven weather extremes.
Last night was “very close” call – a long way to go.
Spread this Meme
Conserving: The Power of Markets, Cooperation, and Community
California survived without widespread blackouts yesterday, in a record September heat wave that continues.
No guarantees, but the response to a statewide call for citizens to conserve showed the continuing positive power of communities mobilized by effective leadership, and suggests what humanity might be able to accomplish, working together.
A timely mobile alert may have prevented hundreds of thousands of Californians from being plunged into darkness in the middle of a heat wave Tuesday night.
Just before 5:30 p.m. local time, California’s grid operator ordered its highest level of emergency, warning that blackouts were imminent. Then, at 5:48 p.m., the state’s Office of Emergency Services sent out a text alert to people in targeted counties, asking them to conserve power if they could.
Within five minutes the grid emergency was all but over.
Power demand plunged by 1.2 gigawatts between 5:50 and 5:55 p.m., and would continue to drop in the hours after that, according to data from the California Independent System Operator. A gigawatt is enough to power about 750,000 Californian homes.
–
By 8 p.m., the grid operator canceled the highest level of emergency without calling for power cuts. More than 500,000 homes and businesses had been warned earlier in the day that they might lose service.
Now, what happens if you apply that to a continent – one that’s under attack with energy as the weapon?
In the 70s, OPEC raised the price of oil overnight by more than 300 percent, first reactions were that this meant the end of civilization. Very Serious People who had studied, and made, energy policy for decades were convinced, for example, that electricity production had to increase at 7 percent annually, or we would revert to the dark ages.
That didn’t happen of course – what did happen is that energy demand turned out to be extremely elastic and price sensitive. In very short order, energy consumers, especially big businesses, learned to operate with a lot less energy, and efficiency became a buzzword and an engineering specialty.
Is it time we learned that lesson again?
Continue reading “Conserving: The Power of Markets, Cooperation, and Community”Not long after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, another mobilization began. European energy ministers and diplomats started jetting across the world and inking energy deals — racing to prepare for a rough winter should Russia choose to cut off its cheap gas in retaliation for Western sanctions.
Since then, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has fiddled with the gas tap to Europe repeatedly. Through Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas monopoly, Russia has vastly reduced supplies or suspended them for days at a time — until last week, when it announced that it would indefinitely halt flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that supplies Germany, and through it, much of Europe.
Yet when the blow finally came, it provoked more ridicule than outrage among European leaders, who say that by now they would expect nothing less from Mr. Putin and that they have accepted that the era of cheap Russian gas is over, unimaginable as that might have seemed just months ago.
“Don’t Drink the Water” Now Applies in USA
Thanks to Republican mismanagement of yet again another majority black city’s resources.
Underfunded for decades, Jackson Mississippi’s water processing facilities were unable to withstand climate enhanced extreme rains in recent weeks – leading to loss of safe water supply.
Russia’s Psychological War: Europe Has Not Seen the Worst of Energy Crisis
Russia played one card, shutting down the Nordstream gas pipeline last week.
There are more cards to play, including shutting off all remaining pipeline supplies to the continent in the depths of winter.
Now, Gazprom, the Russian gas producer, has released a bizarre video portraying, apparently, a freezing Europe following a complete cutoff. Discussed above, vid below.
California Avoids Blackouts for Now, but Heat is Relentless
California electric customers pitched in to avoid crisis. In coming years, solar and battery deployment will catch up, but for now, a pinch.
California has avoided ordering rolling blackouts after electricity demand reached a record-high Tuesday night from excessive heat across the state.
The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s electrical grid, imposed its highest level energy emergency on Tuesday, a step that comes before ordering rolling blackouts and allows the state to access emergency power sources.
The Office of Emergency Services also sent a text alert to residents requesting them to conserve power. The operator downgraded the Stage 3 alert around 8:00 p.m. PT on Tuesday and said that “consumer conservation played a big part in protecting electric grid reliability.”
The state capital of Sacramento reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service, surpassing a record that was set almost 100 years ago. And nearly a half-dozen cities in the San Francisco Bay Area tied or set all-time highs, the agency said.
California’s Record Temps Testing Grid Now
All. Power. Plants. Need. Backup.
The Anti-Clean energy crowd will tell you that “only wind and solar need backup”.
But professionals know that ALL POWER PLANTS need backup, and it’s been that way for more than a century.
Case in point, Cook Nuclear Plant on the southeast shore of Lake Michigan just went offline in an instant and was down for a week.
No blackouts because, hey, Grid operators know what they’re about.
Nuclear plants in particular, can shut down at a moments notice, taking, in this case, a thousand megawatts offline in an instant. By contrast, wind and solar are eminently predictable
Meanwhile, wind and solar, backed by ever-increasing storage, have been steady performers in Michigan and across the country this summer, despite record heat and droughts that have caused shutdowns or derating in traditional thermal power plants and hydro dams.
Continue reading “All. Power. Plants. Need. Backup.”A nuclear reactor at the Cook Nuclear Plant in Berrien County, Michigan, returned to full service Sunday, a week after it automatically shut down due to a failure in a coolant pump motor, said the plant’s owner, Indiana Michigan Power, on Sunday.
The shutdown was triggered by a reactor coolant pump motor, the company said. No radioactive matter was released and it was not classified as an emergency, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The reactor coolant pump motor failed due to “a fault in a power cable connector,” Indiana Michigan Power said in a news release Sunday. “Operators safely restored the unit to service once the connector repair was completed.”
There were no service interruptions as a result of the reactor shutdown and while the connector was repaired, Indiana Michigan Power said. A second nuclear reactor at the Cook plant remained operational at full capacity while the other unit was out of service.
“Next Generation” Nuclear Plants depend on..Russia
I started banging this drum a while back, looks like other media gradually picking up on it.
The new generation of “Small Modular Nuclear Reactors” depend on something called HALEU, or High Assay Low Enrichment Uranium, a specialized product produced currently only in Russia.
The Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s signature climate initiative, provides 700 million dollars to jumpstart production of this critical fuel in the US.
There are challenges, of course.