Welcome to the PRC, ... Peoples' Republic of China^WCalifornia.
I pointed out to a co-worker that the "state-mandated
low-rate,low-supply,high-demand" power problem was tried in most parts of
the former Soviet Union... and those citizens prepare for winters by
stocking up on heating supplies as they "Expect" power to go out. This was
a known-failed experiment before CA tried it.
But, California essentially tried the same thing... high-demand, low-rate,
and (through AQMD and other fun things) low-supply. They (through doing
this) convinced people that they have a "right" to expect power at
below-market-value. Who can blame PG&E's suppliers for being on the
"winning side" of a supply-side-economics issue? Who can blame PG&E for
being handcuffed by the state's rules? The people of California can, for
some reason that boggles this CA resident.
But maybe that's cuz I'm not a native. It seems that the natives are all
upset, and the "non-native" folks I work with tend to blame California
residents themselves for voting/etc. that put the price-fixes in place.
"You wanted it, you got it, see how stupid it was? Now pay the price and
move on instead of whining".
Seem to be in the minority here though.
D
(This is operational, insofar as its good advice that "if you want to have
consistent power for your colo, you should consider states that don't do
silly things to power companies". )
Stretching WAAAAYYY back in my power engineering days 15 years ago ...
Anyone know the name of the proposed interconnect between east and west where they were going to connect the Eastern grid and Western grid together with a very short, very high cap DC line?
The main issue, which may or may not still be one, is that the East half of the US couldn't help because their gird is totally separate and out of phase with the Western grid.
I wonder if thats still the case today and if so, what difference it could make if they could wheel power into the West from excess capacity (if any) from the east.
Miles City Montana 200MW
Stegall, WY (?) 100MW
SIdney, NE 200MW
Total convertible transmission facilities: 500MW
There are also some significant DC transmission lines (400kV to 500kV) from Canada and between MN and ND and MN and SD. Those may or may not be used for phase conversion. It doesn't tell for sure.
The simple solution would be to interconnect the two grids so excess capacity could be wheeled East to West or vice versa. California is going black. If we could just shut off the rest of the Western states for a little bit, connect the grids, resync the generation, we'd be all set.
As some of the engineering problems used to say, the implementation is left to the reader
I wonder if thats still the case today and if so, what difference it
could make if they could wheel power into the West from excess
capacity (if any) from the east.
Some federal beaurocrat would mandate nationwide rolling blackouts in
order to ship power into CA.
If you ever wonder "what if" where government is concerned, just think
of the dumbest, most dangerous option possible and that is what will
happen.
Is anyone seeing lots of routing oddities? I'm not able to get to a lot
of sites that I normally can, that are hosted in different places; and I'm
wondering if some providers are routing around California outages.
The problem is more economic than technical. There's plenty of power,
just that the right people don't have the cash on hand to pay for
it. Just criminal mismanagement, nothing new.
Is anyone seeing lots of routing oddities? I'm not able to get to a lot
of sites that I normally can, that are hosted in different places; and I'm
wondering if some providers are routing around California outages.
The outages weren't that widespread. Any real colo or peering points are going to have ample battery and generator to get around a one hour outage.
