With California’s energy grid unable to meet demand, four emergency gas-powered generators have been called on to ease the strain on the state’s power grid.
California is facing a heat wave with triple-digit temperatures breaking records, according to CBS, which noted Livermore — in the Golden State’s Alameda County — set a new record Monday at 116 degrees.
“We have now entered the most intense phase of this heat wave,” said Elliot Mainzer, president and chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, according to The Sacramento Bee.
“The potential for rotating outages has increased significantly.”
He added that the grid faced “energy deficits of 2,000 to 4,000 megawatts, which is as much as 10 percent of normal electricity demand.”
To avert that, the California Independent System Operator on Monday called on the Department of Water Resources to activate four emergency generators, according to KMPH-TV. The generators were installed in 2021, two each in the Sacramento-area cities of Roseville and Yuba City.
The generators can provide up to 120 megawatts of power through natural gas. That’s enough to power about 120,000 homes, according to a Department of Water Resources news release.
The situation facing California was described by The Sacramento Bee this way: “California’s increasing reliance on solar power and other renewable sources has made the grid susceptible to blackouts in the early evening, when solar panels go dark but the weather stays hot.”
One social media user summed it up with dark humor:
“We are on razor-thin margins,” said Siva Gunda, vice chairman of the California Energy Commission, according to the Bee.
On Monday, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s electricity flow, put out a statement in which Mainzer said demand reduction was essential.
“We need a reduction in energy use that is two or three times greater than what we’ve seen so far as this historic heat wave continues to intensify,” he said.
Jack Brouwer, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California at Irvine, told CBS in late August that the state’s energy infrastructure grid cannot provide what is being expected of it.
“The grid does not currently have the capability to add millions of battery electric or even fuel-cell electric vehicles today,” he said, according to CBS.
Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, has said the strain EVs will place on the power grid will be devastating.
“Let’s say we were to have a substantial number of [electric] vehicles charging at home as everybody dreams,” he said, according to a Yahoo report in May. “Today’s grid may not be able to support it. It all boils down to: Are you charging during the time solar power is on?”
Rajagopal led a study that showed that peak charging demand could more than double by 2030 if EV owners charge vehicles after work at their homes.
*****************
Europeans are about to learn a very hard lesson on socialism, green energy and the danger of relying on an enemy state to supply their energy needs.
Ursula von der Leyen, the current EU president, has just declared that member states will be forced to reduce electrical demand during peak hours, essentially a rationing scheme.
Talking about why prices rise during peak hours Von Der Leven declared “Because in these peak demands the expensive gas comes into the market. So what we have to do is flatten the curve and avoid the peak demands. We will propose a mandatory target for reducing electricity use at peak hours and we will work very closely with the member states to achieve this.”
“Flatten the curve?” Where have we heard that phrase before?
This is but another example of the ineffectiveness of green energy and shows how bad public policy can destroy even the most advanced and prosperous economies.
More on the scale of Europe’s energy crisis via Zero Hedge:
What is the scale of the energy challenge?
We got a very shocking sense of the staggering numbers involved in the existential, crippling European crisis earlier today when Norwegian energy giant Equinor echoed what Zoltan Pozsar said in March, warning that “European energy trading risks grinding to a halt unless governments extend liquidity to cover margin calls of at least $1.5 trillion.” As Bloomberg put it, in its best non-Zoltan imitation, “aside from inflating bills and fanning inflation, the biggest energy crisis in decades is sucking up capital to guarantee trades amid wild price swings. That’s putting pressure on European Union officials to intervene to prevent energy markets from stalling.”
“Liquidity support is going to be needed,” Helge Haugane, Equinor’s senior vice president for gas and power, said in an interview. The issue is focused on derivatives trading, while the physical market is functioning, he said, adding that the company’s estimate for $1.5 trillion to prop up so-called paper trading is “conservative.””
In other words, massive amounts of newly-printed funding (because with yields blowing up, Europe’s fiscal stimulus will be over before it started unless central banks step in and backstop the latest energy hyperinflation bailout plans) will be required to avert an energy disaster. Alas, the final number will be even more massive, because overnight Goldman’s research team published a must read note (available to pro subs), in which the bank looked at the scale of the energy bill challenge, potential European government responses and industry implications, and quantified the total damage. The numbers are staggering:
According to Goldman, Italian household energy bills could rise from ~€150 to ~€600 in 2023. Some more details:
“For most families and industrial customers, energy bills are renegotiated every twelve months; on our estimates, energy bills for most consumers will peak this winter. We estimate a c.€500/month cost for power and gas currently, implying a c.200% increase vs. 2021 when average bills were c.€160/month. Energy bills could approach €600/month in a zero flows (from Russia) scenario we believe (see here for more on this zero flows scenario). “
Europeans are about to learn a very hard lesson indeed. Unfortunately our government seems intent on taking us down the same destructive path as Europe in terms of committing energy suicide.
What did the socialists use before candles? Electricity…
No comments:
Post a Comment