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Dark City, San Francisco?
tavern writes: "San Francisco is going to start rolling blackouts today! I can see the headlines for the Onion tomorrow, 'United States Declared a 3rd World Nation'" The article reads like something out of Atlas Shrugged -- parts shortages and clogged intakes for power plants' cooling water are contributing to the energy strain. However, from this piece, it seems like the (intentional) blackouts remain potential rather than actual. Can anyone out thataway comment on the power situation as it affects you? (I'd be out buying a UPS right now ...)
"Can anyone out thattaway comment on the power situation as it affects you? " - No. My power will be out when it affects me.
In the linked article:
UPDATE: The California Independent System Operator has downgraded Thursday's Stage Three power emergency to a Stage Two emergency, ending the threat of rolling blackouts across the Bay Area.
Cal ISO spokesman Patrick Dorinson said that the combination of conservation and added power buys during the day has enabled the ISO, which oversees California's power grid, to avoid proceeding from a Stage Three Electrical Emergency issued at 9:30 a.m. today to the more drastic step of a rolling blackout order.
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As quoted from the site: UPDATE: The California Independent System Operator has downgraded Thursday's Stage Three power emergency to a Stage Two emergency, ending the threat of rolling blackouts across the Bay Area.
The politicians are trying to blame the free market to cover for their own problems. They forcibly separated generation from distribution, de-regulated pricing on the supply side, enacted regulation that made it virtually impossible to build new capacity, and maintained strict control over retail rates. A recipe for disaster.
Look at what has happened to natural gas in the Midwest. My gas bill was over $400 this month because the price has quadrupled. But I don't have to worry about running out of gas. Supply and demand balances everything out. If gas rates were frozen at old low levels, no one would conserve - voluntarily - and we'd have rolling service interruptions too.
Put the blame 100% on the California legislature for passing this botchwork law.
The flaw in this analogy is obvious. Electrical energy is a resource that can be produced in practically limitless amounts, given the right technology.
No, it isn't. If it's practically limitless, why are the rolling blackouts in California an issue?
However you make electricity, you still make noxious waste, whether it be spent radioactive fuel rods, or dead fish from the hydroelectric dam, or greenhouse gases from a fossil fuel plant.
A photovoltaic cell (solar) requires more energy to manufacture than it will produce over its entire life.
The silver bullet that will eradicate all of the problems with electrical consumption (harnessed fusion) is even further off than zero emissions cars.
So, your thinking and your understanding of the world is flawed. You don't think about where the electricity comes from.
Therefore, if you can have such luxuries as you >17" monitor, I'll have my 1974 model car.
Clean air isn't something we can create (at least, not yet) - it is by definition a lack of pollutants. Therefore, the best way to make more energy is to generate more, the best way to make more clean air is to pollute less.Of course! It's so easy to do! I'm a good person, I can run my big and inefficient 17" monitor because they can always generate more power, even though that power is derived from [insert ecological threat here]!
You make no sense.
What you're basically telling me is that *you* can have *your* inefficient big monitor, and *I* can't have my allegedly inefficient old car?
Of course, energy conservation is important, too; a ban on old refrigerators might be a good idea, it's just not practical to enforce.Sure! I have a 1956 QuikFrez. Nice fridge, though it can't keep ice cream worth a damn.
Where'd I get it? When I first moved out on my own, I was driving past an appliance shop and I spotted it sitting by the scrap metal bins. I managed to get it into the back of my old Chevette and tied it into place. Bringing it home, I found that the compressor was bad.
I shrugged my shoulders, drained the freon (a friend of mine bought it off me), and pulled the fridge to pieces. New insulation. New magnetic door seal gasket, custom made for me. New paint job, Honda's white paint. New thermostat. New compressor, with R134a (ozone safe) freon.
Now, are you going to take that away from me because it's an old fridge? Because it really isn't. It's a new fridge that happens to be in an old cabinet.
Cars, on the other hand, have to be individually licensed, so inspecting them for emissions is more than practical.Electric bills have to be paid individually, so going into peoples' houses to look for energy-wasting old fridges and 17" monitors is more than practical. Maybe they can save us a whole lot of trouble and look for subversive materials while they're there, you know, like the copy of Socialist Worker that you keep on your coffee table?
I find the hatred for environmental legislation that some people exhibit to be profoundly disturbing.I find the willingness to give up your basic rights to privacy, possession and maintenance of those things that you've bought or built to be frightening.
Of course I'm pro-capitalist and pro-industrySure you are.
but people's health and quality of life have to be maintained.Think about it this way:
If my old fridge were so inefficient, how many years would it take for a new fridge to pay for itself with the electrical savings? My electric bill gives me a vested interest in making sure that my appliances are efficient. (Why do you think I spent over $300 for a *good* compressor for that fridge and then hours cutting appliance-grade styrofoam to shape to fit into its curved top? I could have repaired the old one and left the original fiberglass insulation in there.)
If you want to splurge with a 17" monitor, I'll splurge with my old car.
This doesn't mean a ban on industry, just the diversion of some resources into minimizing the impact on the air and water.Too often, these things are unrealistic or just simply stupidly planned.
For example, if you're running a power plant that's been operational for 30 years, because the power plant is old, it doesn't have to meet modern emissions standards. It would be rather unfair to have to make the owner spend $10 million for an unforseen upgrade.
Now, if you're considering replacing that power plant because you want something that's going to give you more power for every ton of coal that you burn, and yet you have to spend $10 million in pollution controls that your old plant didn't have to have, how long will it take you to recoup that $10 million in additional energy efficiency? Probably longer than your shareholders want.
So, if there were no rule, the upgrade would have happened, and the power plant would produce x more kWh of electricity for every ton of coal burned. More electricity produced from each ton of coal means that less coal is required to meet demand, and therefore less emissions occur.
However, because there was a rule, the power plant bumps along as it did, inefficient as before, because the cost of new pollution controls makes it impractical in any business sense, burning more coal than it needs to, and therefore producing more nasty by-products.
Before catalytic converters were added to cars, cars did have more emissions of unburnt gasoline (hydrocarbons) than they have now. But sulphur dioxide was absolutely unheard of in car exhaust.
So, all the tree huggers whined, and the EPA demanded that cataclysmic converters be added to cars. Gas mileage went down, because the engine has to push exhaust gases past this new restriction in the exhaust pipe. And while unpleasant smelling but relatively harmless HC was removed from the exhaust, the small amounts of sulphur in the fuel were catalyzed into sulphur dioxide, which promptly floats up into the clouds to combine with water and form acid rain.
Good job, environmentalists. See what happens when you don't ask a scientist before you start writing your Congressman?
Today, cataclysmic converters are de rigeur, despite their gas mileage (which means more emissions!) penalty and the sulphuric acid which falls from the sky and kills lakes and forests.
Here's what I'm saying: everyone has a vested interest in energy efficiency. Businesses, individuals, environmentalists. Restrictions and laws that are designed to help more often than not end up creating their own problems which impede the normal tendency of the marketplace to improve products and services.
However, anytime any government gets involved in anything, it gets screwed up. It's been proven time and time again. The places where the governments are most intrusive are also the poorest, dirtiest places on earth. Look at India as an example. I understand their parliament debated for months as to whether they should allow Coca-Cola to be sold there - all the while people are starving to death.
Car companies switched to electronic ignition from Kettering points back in the 1970s because the market demanded better drivability and gas mileage, and technology made the price reasonable. Likewise, modern fuel injection systems and overhead cams would have been adopted for market reasons, without government intervention. When gasoline is burned at its stoichiometric optimum of 14.7:1, it produces the most power with the least emissions. Power translates to engine efficiency and therefore gas mileage; emissions reductions go hand in hand with that.
It gets worse. It's arguable that the current SUV craze is based on government-legislated Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws. After all, the Feds told the car companies that all their carlines had to have an average fuel consumption. Over the years, this was increased and increased and increased. Cars like the Caprice Classic, Impala and Crown Victoria are being squeezed out.
And yet, the market shows that some people still want a big and heavy car. Ask an SUV owner why they like their SUV; weight is a recurring theme.
So, because trucks are exempt from CAFE rules, the car companies started to build big land yachts that are technically trucks. The SUV was born. 4x4 isn't even the prime motivator anymore. Look at how many Blazers, Durangos, Explorers - hell, even Jeeps, are 2WD.
The buyer wants a big, heavy car, but can't get one. So, instead, he buys the next best thing. He buys a station wagon with leather seats that has been built onto a truck frame. Sure, because of its huge frontal area and the excess weight of a frame that was designed for carrying around sheets of drywall, it consumes twice the gas of the Caprice Classic that he wanted. But since the Caprice is discontinued, he bought the next best thing.
Neat, huh?
I've heard that CAFE will soon start to be applied to a manufacturer's truck lines, too. I assure you, this will backfire, too. I don't know how, I can't predict it. But mark my words, and remember them ten years from now: I guarantee that somehow the market will again turn environmentalist rules against the environmentalists.
And since when did anyone have a "right" to drive? By democratic legislation, cars have always had to be roadworthy, safe, and operated by a governmentally licensed driver.When on the road, yes. However, your simple right to possession takes over when it's parked in your driveway. Possession is 9/10 of the law.
If you want to say that a car has to be registered as your possession while it's parked in your driveway and not being driven, I'd suggest that my next step is to ask when I have to register my other possessions, like my computer, my kitchen knives, my TV set, my telephone, etc. with the government authorities. After all, all of these devices either consume precious energy or can be used in subversive and dangerous ways.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Stupid Intel chips use too much power.
If all the hot Silicon Valley companies would switch to PowerPC chips, power consumption would go way down. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Rolling blackouts do not happen in all major metropolitan areas.
They don't happen in London.
They don't happen in Birmingham.
They don't happen in Manchester.
Oh, you mean all AMERICAN metropolitan areas?
Personally I find it bewildering that the US is unable to produce enough power to keep going. Even though the UK is not always able to meet peak demands, when we do have a shortfall we can cover the extra by using spare capacity from France. Who in turn can call on half of Europe.
If that can be done in Europe, where we don't even speak the same language, and have a history of hatred, xenophobia and kicking the French, I'm stunned that the US can't do the same.
~Cederic
When the topics are technical, Slashdot has a really good signal/noise ratio. Smart things get modded up; stupid things get modded down and/or stomped on.
Here, though, we see what happens when it's a topic where people don't know much about. The volume is just as high, the opinions are just firm. But most people are just talking out their asses, and moderators are giving big points to Limbaugh-like rants without a scrap of fact in 'em.
Since this article already has enough opinion, I'll just stick to a few facts and some interesting links.
I live in San Francisco, so I've been following this closely. A very interesting site for the curious is the California Independent System Operator, an organization responsible for the long-distance high-voltage lines and the power that flows over them. They have a FAQ, a diagram that shows how the power flows, and an up-to-the-minute graph showing projected and actual power load. (I say we all pick a time tomorrow to turn off everything and see if we can make the graph drop.)
Personally, I use 100% renewable power from utility.com. (I actually pay less than others, but I'd happily pay more for my green preferences.) They are certified by Green-e, a non-profit that verifies the power content. (The typical mix for California uses only 12% renewables, with 20% coal, 20% large hydroelectric, 31% natural gas, and 16% nuclear. (Yes, large hydroelectric is counted separately; it's not considered very environmentally friendly these days.)
There are several good articles in the New York Times about all this, including one on following the money. There is also one on how Texas plans to do it differently. And as subscribers to The Economist know, California's deregulation was a pretty shoddy job compared to other utility deregulations around the world.
So those of you who lay the blame entirely on environmental regs from California's own special blend of fruits, nuts, and flakes should research a little further. You'll find a picture that's much more interesting and complex: political dithering, a lack of foresight, corporate greed, and plenty of plain old stupidity are involved.
Well, some of the environmentalist literature that I've read suggest that european equipment tends to be about twice as efficient as the amazingly wasteful american stuff. No I can't support that claim, other than perhaps americans just tend to waste too much by living in big houses, driving big cars, and just generally using stuff larger than they need.
(1) no nuclear reactors (waste/safety issues)
(2) no coal fired power plants (air emissions issues)
(3) no diesel fired power plants (air emmissions again)
(4) no hydroelectric plants (harms [cuddly species of the day]'s habitat)
(5) in fact, no new power plants at all ("not in *my* backyard!")
(6) you shut down existing plants from (1), (2), (3), and (4)
(7) Solar and geothermal don't seem to work like you think... or at all (i.e., operate at a loss).
Well, congrats... your air and water still suck. Species are still going extinct. You put all your eggs on natural gas which is now drying up and prices skyrocketing, you're freezing your asses off and whining about power shortages, high prices, and rolling bloackouts.
And now you:
(1) want continued legislation to FORCE other states to sell power to CA companies headed into bankruptcy? (Who wants to sell to deadbeats?)
(2) Blame deregulation for the energy shortage! Can't have liberals blaming their eco legislation or (gasp!) call for repealing some of it.
(3) Don't give a flying fuck that other states have to pollute more to keep CA on electrical welfare?
Thoroughly, California made its own mess and ought to be forced to wallow in it. You're all screwed and it's your own fault.
What will you do? Here's my prediction: Democrats will do ***NOTHING***. They'll sit and endure the rolling blackouts and come up with bullshit to justify them to the people. They will wait for republicans to propose building more power plants, and repealing the legislation preventing their construction. They will quietly vote to approve these measures amid much muttering and while speaking against it or more likely, will simply abstain on eco-law repealing bills to give republicans a majority (among remaining legislators who actually vote) to let the bills pass. Then when anyone, ANYONE complains about air quality or water pollution or nuclear waste in California they will "blame republicans for rolling back all our hard work to protect your environment." Saying they never voted to support that legislation. Yeah right.
You want power? Then you have to get dirty *just* *like* *everyone* *else*. TANSTAAFL, you know?
IMO, Republicans ought to continue the staredown with democrats until they start repealing their own legislation. Make the basterds squirm and swallow their own bullshit pride. As for the populations without power? Well, at least they'll learn what voting for liberals results in (stone age living) and will know better and teach their kids better in the future.
Um, did I miss anything here?
Free tip for CA denizens: The Plan to steal your cars from you via smog regs is already well underway. Start fighting it now. Basically it combines (1) smog check rules DESIGNED TO FAIL A PERCENTAGE of cars (with an eventual goal of 97% of all cars over 10 years old) with (2) rules that make it ILLEGAL to keep an unregistered vechicle on your property. (1) + (2) = State power to STEAL YOUR CARS and crush them into cubes. See http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1223/sb42/smo gflyer_5.html for more details.
Rolling blackouts happen. They've happened in Silicon Valley before, they happen in all major metropolitan areas.
I used to be the senior Unix admin for the largest nuclear power company in the US. Here's the abridged version of how these things happen:
1) There's a huge stock-market-like brokerage for energy across the USA.
2) Power companies are basically market players, betting on energy futures. They use data to predict the energy usage for a given day, and buy any they can't produce to cover the overage.
3) Power companies, like any other entity trying to predict a nonlinear chaotic system, fail miserably from time to time, and they end up eating into their reserves.
4) The power companies, in coordination with state and local governments, have contingency plans in place that ensure there's enough energy left in the reserves to maintain critical and emergency services, even though it may mean halting delivery to all other customers.
5) In the meantime, the brokers at the power companies frantically try to buy extra energy from the brokerages. But it's a free market, and last-minute ergs cost much, much more than those bought with foresight. Further, it's a finite resource...if there's bad weather regionally or nationwide, there might not _be_ any excess to buy. So you're stuck depleting your reserves, and hoping the hospitals, police, and other infrastructure components don't go dark longer than their backup systems can cover.
It's common. And it's going to get worse in all major metropolitan areas over the next 10-20 years. Get used to it.
.@.
I wouldn't sit a car battery right on my carpet. At least get one of those plastic battery cases to contain any acit that might leak out (esp while charging the battery).
A fast food tray is enough. I occasionally bring a cold battery in from outside to charge it. Theoretically, acid shouldn't leak out while you're charging - if it does, you're charging it too hard and the escaping hydrogen is pushing the acid out of the cells where it spills to the floor.
Having said that, batteries aren't always perfectly sealed, even with the caps on the cells...
If you hear your battery making noises like a frothy bubbling sound, stop charging: you're overcharging it. Be careful that the switch on the charger is *below* the battery, because the frothy bubbling is lighter-than-air and extremely flammable hydrogen. Do not smoke near the battery.
Make sure that wherever it is that you're charging the battery, you've got it well ventilated. I always wear a pair of safety glasses and keep a box of baking soda around just in case the battery blows up. And it does happen. It looks like the Hindenburg, only smaller, and shooting hot sulphuric acid around.
When you're using the battery, you can worry a little less about ventilation: they only give it off when they're being charged.
Remember that a lead-acid battery, however inelegant and unrefined they may be, packs a hell of a lot of energy in a small space. You don't want to release that energy without being careful how it's controlled. A good car battery can make a 1/4" diameter screwdriver shank glow bright cherry red in under 5 seconds. And I've seen an engineer lose a finger because the iron pinky ring that engineers wear got shorted across a car battery. Red hot iron ring around a finger = amputated finger.
Be careful and respectful of the power of a battery.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Auto makers will be heavily fined if they don't meet the minimum percentage; however, I find it hard to believe that people are going to run out to buy electric cars if they won't be able to charge them whenever they need to(which will be quite often due to the limited range).
(Yeah yeah, actually I think electric and hybrid vehicles are pretty cool... it's just that we'd be completely hozed, as opposed to just somewhat screwed, if the "targets" for ZEVs had actually been met...)
Ah, the mandatory Slashdot liberal-bashing, anti-environmenal rant.
Well, congrats... your air and water still suck. Species are still going extinct. You put all your eggs on natural gas which is now drying up and prices skyrocketing,
Typical anti-environmentalist propaganda. Because a few environmental regulations that managed to squeeze by intense corporate lobbying and Republican opposition don't suddenly solve all the environmental problems in the world they should be repealed? Here's a question; what would the air quality be like without these emissions laws? Of course, the typical right-wing reaction to environmental problems has always been to a) spread FUD and personal attacks, and b) ignore the problem (what pollution?). They ignore the science, they ignore quality of life issues, all in an insane attempt to squeeze out a little bit more money for the corporations. The right has no environmental policy other than to pretend it doesn't exist. And natural gas is drying up? How come I haven't seen headlines to that effect? It would be a news item a lot more significant than California's energy shortages.
you're freezing your asses off and whining about power shortages, high prices, and rolling bloackouts.
Freezing? Yes, we all know what a tundra California is. And anyone "whining" about high prices has been doing it for a while, since the end-user pricing is set by the government.
(2) Blame deregulation for the energy shortage! Can't have liberals blaming their eco legislation or (gasp!) call for repealing some of it.
The "deregulation" involved freeing up the price utility companies pay the power generators; the cost to the end user is fixed by the government. Something which the utility companies fought for so they wouldn't have to risk actually seeing their prices go down to competition. Kind of backfired on them; they figured they'd make out better in the end if they didn't have to lower prices, and gambled that they wouldn't have the price they pay for the energy themselves shoot up. Of course the ultimate origin of the energy shortage is simply the fact that too many people are using it; logical thing would be to (gasp!) limit use, and since nobody seems to be too interested in doing that it has to be forced (i.e. blackouts). The bizarre thing is that companies who will obsess over every little expense their business runs up see nothing wrong in leaving the lights, air conditioning, and computers on all night when nobody's there.
Free tip for CA denizens: The Plan to steal your cars from you via smog regs is already well underway. Start fighting it now. Basically it combines (1) smog check rules DESIGNED TO FAIL A PERCENTAGE of cars (with an eventual goal of 97% of all cars over 10 years old) with (2) rules that make it ILLEGAL to keep an unregistered vechicle on your property. (1) + (2) = State power to STEAL YOUR CARS and crush them into cubes.
Are those capitalized words supposed to inspire shock and a surge of emotion? There is a terrible air pollution problem in California; the emissions standards are designed to alleviate this. Very few older cars may be able to pass these inspections. Whether your car's driving on your property or on the highways, it's still polluting a common resource; the air we breathe. Or would you accept it if someone moves next door to you and starts burning huge piles of tires 24 hours a day (why not? it's on his property!)
In the end, as much as the right tries to make it all sound like some secret conspiracy, auto emissions standards in California didn't just appear out of nowhere; they've been a topic of conversation for years, and the voters of California chose their representatives. This isn't some shadowy liberal plan; the majority of people there decided they wanted a cleaner environment, so they voted that way.
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I would like to know where all those whining enviornmentalists agaist nuclear power are now... IN THE DARK!!
Not necessarily a bad place to be. One of the results of the famous New York City blackout of a few decades ago was the ludicrous hike in that city's birth rate 9 months later
Course, we're talking about San Francisco, here, which is a completely different basket of fruit.
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Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway.
There is a terrible air pollution problem in California; the emissions standards are designed to alleviate this.
There is a terrible energy crisis in California. What I propose is designed to alleviate this. Read on.
Very few older cars may be able to pass these inspections.Very few 17" or greater monitors use as little energy as a 15" monitor.
Whether your car's driving on your property or on the highways, it's still polluting a common resource; the air we breathe.Whether your monitor is being used to surf the web or for kernel-bashing, it's still using excess energy on a common resource, the electrical grid.
Therefore, I propose that we have a law that bans people from being able to connect to the Internet if they have a monitor bigger than 15".
Further, as the next phase of the program, I propose that if we *see* a 17" or bigger monitor in someone's home, we remove it from their property because destroying these energy wasting and inefficient big monitors will serve the greater good.
Scared yet? This is *exactly* what is done to those of us who love and cherish old cars. Even if you have no interest in old cars, you've got to realize what a profound and dangerous reduction in personal freedoms this is.
I'm all for clean air. That's why I maintain my vehicles well. Old vehicles don't count for a huge percentage of the miles travelled. Old age, wear and accidents control the quantities of old vehicles on the road quite effectively as it is, and without an erosion of your freedom or mine.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The science is there. The problems these days are political in nature.
First you have waste disposal, which is a much nicer problem with nuclear power plants than with say coal. Nuclear plants produce less waste and conveniently locate it in one place so that it can be properly managed. Coal plants, in contrast, spew their waste all over the place. The waste from a coal plant is a much _larger_ problem but one that's easier to ignore. And no matter what ignorant environmentalists would like you to believe, nuclear waste isn't inherently any worse, or more dangerous, than other kinds of toxic waste that we have to deal with all the time. The solution is to lock it up in the ground in an appropriate place, and there are lots of areas that are appropriate. The problem is entirely political; people don't mind so much a toxic chemical waste dump, but they're afraid of a nuclear one because of the word "nuclear". And for some reason I don't understand, they'd rather breathe toxic waste every day than have it locked up in the ground where it MIGHT, *possibly*,
one day, leak out and harm the water quality in the area (as if nobody would notice, and as if there aren't ways of resolving that).
As for newer, cleaner plants, the political problem there is that you end up with a lot more material that could be used to make nuclear weapons. It's as simple as that... fuel and waste from a conventional plant are almost totally useless in weapons production, and the modern reactors would produce some amounts of material that would potentially be useful for making bombs. Not that there is really much of anyone who has a real use for a nuclear weapon and doesn't already have it.
Thank you for your time.
Uhm, gee sparky, lets do the math. Is anyone suprised that there might be a problem with atitudes like those above? Lets try to be a LITTLE bit sensible. AND by the way, the CA power situation was PARTIALLY deregualted. So saying that the free market is the problem is not entirely correct, saying that deregualtion is the problem is not entirely correct. Sayint that stupidity and ingnorance is the problem would be correct.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I was working from home that day and discovered that my ISDN line didn't work (used that at the time for telecommuting); but this happened frequently on my block (unreliable power) so I figured I'd just go to the office. I went out to the car, and when I discovered that the electric buses didn't work, and the streetlights were out, it became obvious that nobody was going anywhere. My neighborhood coffee shop ran out of hot coffee very quickly, as EVERYONE needed some, and so I distinctly remember carrying home pre-ground french roast to make with my stovetop espresso maker.
It turned out that PG&E (that poor, suffering company in the news these days) had massively fucked up a maintenance job:
The problem, utility officials said, originated with a PG&E construction crew error during the installation of a new transformer at the San Mateo substation. The crew violated procedures and neglected to remove a safety ground wire before re-energizing that portion of the substation.
When the switch was thrown, electricity bypassed four 115,000-volt lines that supply power to the Peninsula and San Francisco and instead plowed into the ground.
Fortunately the circuit breakers did their thing and prevented all sorts of chaos (other than power loss) on the power grid. But PG&E certainly did not make a good impression that day!
sulli
RTFJ.
The Republican-controlled state legislature AND governor's mansion have since been replaced with Democrat-controlled legislature and governor. When the legislation to deregulate passed, the GOP knew the writing was on the wall.
I hate to tell you this, but we knew not to trust the bastards, and they got us in the end. Blame that CA state GOP, not the voters.
While we haven't had blackouts yet, my electric bill is up about 300% since start of deregulation
To compare the cost of a solar power system (or wind or water power) to grid power:
- Design a system adequate for your needs.
- Compute its lifetime.
- Compute its cost, including purchase price, consumables, and maintainence costs over its lifetime.
- Compute the monthly payment if you took out a loan for that amount, running the lifetime of the system. (Don't forget tax credits and mortgage tax breaks if you finance it as part of your house.)
- Compute your average monthly number of kilowatt-hours generated.
- Divide the monthly payment by the monthly kilowatt-hours. This is your cost per kilowatt-hour.
The cost per kilowatt-hour of solar photovoltaic systems has been getting close to the crossover with respect to grid power. For some applications (like country houses or small-loads like illuminated billboards and traffic signs) where the instalation and fixed-costs of grid power are high it's already crossed over - which is why you see so many panels these days. It also beats diesel generators for portable power now.
A big enough jump in the grid's generation cost (such as the one in California, thanks to their shiny new centrally-planned socialized electric system) might push it over even for urban residences.
And California is a good spot for solar. At the latitude of the SF Bay area, for instance, insolation is about 5 solar hours per day. Once you're east of the coastal range (unless you're just downwind of a gap in it or on the west side of a still higher mountain) there's little daytime fog or cloud cover.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way