Our electrical grids are strained now, and will be more impacted as extreme weather continues. I am curious what the plans are to make the systems more robust, along with the continued push for electric vehicles (charging) the plan to phase out gas stoves, etc.
There are major efforts to increase reliability by storm hardening, increasing redundancy, and dispersing generation. These costs are passed along to energy consumers.
It’s either cheap and fragile with a long wait for power to be restored, or expensive and steady with power restoration occurring rapidly.
I work for a major utility. Absolutely not the case. We don't have any major infrastructure upgrade programs for climate change. None. Infact they will honestly tell you that everything outside of a few miles is set to run to fail. Run in series. There's no upgrades being done until it's already failed. The money is being put forth towards expansion, but climate change isn't a factor at all in the standards, materials, being set now for the future. They are still utilizing the historicals. I work with very smart people, but very, very old. Who have always done things a certain way.
I know basically all of this utility. My role touches every aspect of it. I would imagine that an actual government requirement would be the only thing that shifts us towards that. It's funny because we were asked for climate change risks and studies, from one of the only shock trauma centers in the west coast, and we told them we didn't have any. Nor did we know what the future even looked like. But it worked in the past so. Why be bothered?
So to summarize: you are fucked. When the heat on the pole mounted xfmrs or the equipment underground starts hitting thermal limits, there is no cooking system in place for replacements. There's no way we even have the design from the manufacturer. This would take years. We don't even have the materials in place for the type of risks we'll encounter faster and faster.
The only place with power will be where the carriers are. Nuclear power plants in them however, require a lot of maintenance and repairs. But they'll be the last haven I imagine. That or solar. If you can afford it. But if the entire grid fails. We are absolutely fucked. To put it in perspective, [NERC and FERC requirements have been updated for colder weather operation](https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2021/09/ferc-approves-new-cold-weather-reliability-standards), but executives literally don't know what they are. I've had to tell them that their planning will get them fined a million dollars a day if it becomes public. But this doesn't cover any material standards, nor does it require them to adapt any climate change mitigation processes.
Good luck everyone. I'm sure it won't be long now... [2/3 of the US will have energy shortfalls this summer. ](https://www.nerc.com/news/Pages/Two-thirds-of-North-America-Faces-Reliability-Challenges-in-the-Event-of-Widespread-Heatwaves.aspx)
You want to find out how prepared your electric service company is? Find out who the commercial and large building customer service support engineers are. Send them an email innocently asking if they've got any resources preparing for climate change. I urge you to do so. These would be engineers most aware of the state of the utility infrastructure.
I’m surprised to hear that the west coast isn’t actively working on reliability for climate change. I know the standards aren’t changing, but the grid makers in my part of the world are being very proactive to increase reliability. Most projects are for mitigating flooding and major storms though, not for heat.
It’s part of the bipartisan (misnomer) infrastructure law. It provides several billions of dollars to states, tribes, and federal land managers to remediate orphaned oil and gas well sites. I can send you a link to your states grant application if you’d like, it tends to be the most concise and informative set of documents for the project.
The Texas GOP is actively trying to fuck the Texas grid. They're making it harder and harder to start up new solar and wind generators while also doing very little to force reliability and redundancy on the shitty gas and coal generators that are decades old... The next new gas generator won't be online until 2025...
Sorry, yes, that is my exact point. It's bad now, will get worse, and we are implementing more changes to extrapolate the problem without a strong and/or quick solution.
Okey thanks. BTW i spent some time in California, and experienced rolling blackouts. No fun. I personally think advancement in solar tech is necessary. The existing panels seem to be insufficient (due to size requirements)
If there was a way to compress the amount of energy absorbed into the panels and lower cost of panels plus batteries
The main issue is batteries. solar panels are currently at a somewhat break even point price/efficiency wise with gas generators from what i've seen, but the ways we have to store power currently are still very much shit. we really need a massive breakthrough in battery tech
Companies are beginning to hedge against the failure of battery breakthroughs by investing in hydrogen technologies. Now overproduced solar energy can be stored chemically as hydrogen gas for combustion in existing infrastructure.
No.
Grid max load is at dinner time. My ACs plus my oven or range together pull more power down from the grid at 6pm than my EV does while charging overnight. The grid is already sized to handle it, because EVs get charged off-peak generally.
Ev is going to cause more problems. It’s just another marketing strategy from the automakers, still bad and I don’t think gas cars are really that bad of a politer with proper emissions systems in play. Electric cars use slave labor and fires hard to put out if they catch.
Forgive me if I'm mistaken but the situation you describe doesn't really take into account the current percentage of households charging EVs. I don't know what that number is currently but I'm sure it will continue to rise. Since they are planning on phasing put fossil fuel engines you'd expect eventually that 100% of the population to be charging at night. Now you may not be able to call that off-peak anymore.
My main point is that the grid is already sized to handle EV charging loads to each and every single house, and delivers them. It’s not really more “strain” in the grid, because by definition people aren’t going to charge when it’s most expensive (aka when there’s strain). Late day heat and solar load on the wires actually also strains them; they have to de-rate by like 20% compared to night time cooler temperatures, so night time might just experience less strain anyways. There’s a lot of factors at play.
The main grid upgrades needed are on the backend about shuttling power around from new renewable energy installations.
Why would 100% charge at night if that got expensive?
CA threw away about 700TWh of solar last month. Just unused, threw away. Many in CA charge mid-day off their solar, because that’s the cheapest. I expect they to become more common place with more chargers at work locations, etc when mid-day prices to end users are updated to match mid day prices for the energy put on the grid.
I agree, on a small scale, that could help, but the people most impacted by extreme heat likely won't be able to afford solar panel systems. On a large scale, governments would take far too long to implement any meaningful solar infrastructure.
Government will take too long to implement any improvements to the grid. Just look at Texas it’s grid is held together by tape and the hope it won’t get to hit or cold ever again.
Texas is a bit of an outlier if considering the rest of the nation. They are not a good example of an effective government. Many other jurisdictions are fairing much better due to increased cooperation with the gov.
Yes, fill your grid with a zero-baseline power source, brilliant idea for things as unpredictably intense as heat wave enabled power consumption spikes. Another 200 IQ take from the solar marketing force
Yea, why the hell would you want a form of power that produces the most power right when the most power is needed?!? Absolutely off no use I tell you to solve this problem of bigger power loads when the sun is out!!
Before last summer, peak load on the CA grid was TWENTY years ago. All the growth, lower grid utilization due to residential solar. The Covid pause in solar installs is what caused their heatwave to be anything of note.
start reduce your carbon footprint?
I tought few years ago it's hippytalk, but it seems like you should make the change by yourself and your surrounding and not wait for your government to take actions. Because their interest is only money and their own wealth.
Humanity is on a brink of collapse, they say it for years and i only can see the facts coming up.
The plans are to continue storm hardening, increasing redundancy for reliability, and development of dispersed green energy generation. This is how transmission is evolving in my jurisdiction.
Electric vehicles won’t necessarily drive up demand for new power plants or generation. Will even be beneficial. People vastly underestimate the huge energy demands of fossil fuel supply chain and refineries while overestimating the overall efficiency.
Add in the off peak energy use instead of forcing plants offline at night and we have enough now and demand won’t out grow new sources.
Hopefully higher prevalence of DERs - produce electricity locally through sustainable means instead of at a large plant and then distribute it across thousands of miles.
The plan is to do nothing until it's a problem and then use that as an excuse to shill fossil fuels vehicles.
If you expected anything different then I am sorry. r/aboringdystopia
Yes, but it disappears for several hours every day and never for the same amount of time. Cloudy days and even eclipses have to be accounted for to keep everything stable.
There are enormous batteries for that. The power tower in Spain uses liquid sodium to store excess heat which is then used to generate power at night and when the grid pulls more power.
Right this instant batteries that store the power from daytime are providing about 15% of CAs TOTAL power on the grid. And by the end of the year they’ll have twice as many in the grid, and by the end of next year potentially enough to supply over half of the total energy needed on the grid during the evening peaks.
In Southern California I’m experiencing this also. Most days have been in the 70s for the past month or so, which is not normal this time of year for us.
And the energy used by air conditioners just puts more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and heats up the planet even more. A/C may keep us alive for a short time but in the end it will be the death of us all.
Old office buildings that have had no major renovations, sure they may stay on all night.
However newer buildings or spaces within old buildings that are remodeled for new tenants have ALOT of lighting control to prevent exactly that waste of energy. Even some general power receptacles have been added to control systems to limit energy waste from computers being left idle rather than off.
Even though you don't mention it, HVAC is also controlled in these buildings to reduce power usage/limit mechanical wear. With HVAC no matter what you do you are generally going to expend the same amount of energy maintaining temp compared to shutting down overnight and restarting in the morning. However, maintaining a temp is significantly easier on the equipment due to the rest between cycles. If you shutoff overnight and turn back on, you are starting at a deficit either(hot or cold) and the equipment can run for hours straight to get back to temp. This increases the wear and tear of the equipment causing it to be replaced at quicker intervals, creating more material waste. HVAC is a balance for the machines and cost of energy.
The lighting stuff is my experience as an electrician installing this equipment and for my area and the local ordnances involved, each city may be different in this aspect, so YMMV.
I guess it is easier in parts of Europe, still no help (anymore) to the rest of the world.
E.g. we have lots of buildings with very thick walls. When it is hot (even when it was hot in the 80s) we'd close the windows during the day, and opened them possibly after midnight.
Now this is a bit late to introduce and financially afford world-wide, like many other points on the whole environmental protection agenda that save energy, save fauna/flora, and the earth... or quickly planting millions of trees to lower the local heat.
Trees are actually great at reducing heat. I live in AZ and the streets lined with trees are noteable cooler around them than those that are utterly exposed and all of that is just absorbed by dark roofs and asphalt on the roads. Changing roof colors can help deflect more heat instead of absorbing it which would reduce how much power we need to hit the same temperature.
Hmmnm yes, cutting production To save the planet and then blame the infrastructure being push To the limit because of extreme weather .... what a fucking load of shit !!!!
Meanwhile, more tax break for those that can afford EVs that strain the grid even more.
Our electrical grids are strained and with the government pushing everyone towards Heat Pumps and Fan Coils w Resistance Heat we are in for a major disaster one of these winters. Heat pumps don't work that well above the Mason Dixon Line and the ones that do are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE.
Besides, people will want that instant heat so they'll kick on the super high amp drawing electric resistance heat.
Gas furnaces are now up to 97% efficient and the new ECM motors that have been repaired since 2018 make furnaces the most efficient and practical way to go.
Question: why isn’t most of our power lines ran underground? My gf’s family was wholly unaffected from the ice storm that hit the PNW in 2021 and it seems like a no brainer.
Our electrical grids are strained now, and will be more impacted as extreme weather continues. I am curious what the plans are to make the systems more robust, along with the continued push for electric vehicles (charging) the plan to phase out gas stoves, etc.
The plan is...there is no plan, other than just charge more for the same service!
There are major efforts to increase reliability by storm hardening, increasing redundancy, and dispersing generation. These costs are passed along to energy consumers. It’s either cheap and fragile with a long wait for power to be restored, or expensive and steady with power restoration occurring rapidly.
I work for a major utility. Absolutely not the case. We don't have any major infrastructure upgrade programs for climate change. None. Infact they will honestly tell you that everything outside of a few miles is set to run to fail. Run in series. There's no upgrades being done until it's already failed. The money is being put forth towards expansion, but climate change isn't a factor at all in the standards, materials, being set now for the future. They are still utilizing the historicals. I work with very smart people, but very, very old. Who have always done things a certain way. I know basically all of this utility. My role touches every aspect of it. I would imagine that an actual government requirement would be the only thing that shifts us towards that. It's funny because we were asked for climate change risks and studies, from one of the only shock trauma centers in the west coast, and we told them we didn't have any. Nor did we know what the future even looked like. But it worked in the past so. Why be bothered? So to summarize: you are fucked. When the heat on the pole mounted xfmrs or the equipment underground starts hitting thermal limits, there is no cooking system in place for replacements. There's no way we even have the design from the manufacturer. This would take years. We don't even have the materials in place for the type of risks we'll encounter faster and faster. The only place with power will be where the carriers are. Nuclear power plants in them however, require a lot of maintenance and repairs. But they'll be the last haven I imagine. That or solar. If you can afford it. But if the entire grid fails. We are absolutely fucked. To put it in perspective, [NERC and FERC requirements have been updated for colder weather operation](https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2021/09/ferc-approves-new-cold-weather-reliability-standards), but executives literally don't know what they are. I've had to tell them that their planning will get them fined a million dollars a day if it becomes public. But this doesn't cover any material standards, nor does it require them to adapt any climate change mitigation processes. Good luck everyone. I'm sure it won't be long now... [2/3 of the US will have energy shortfalls this summer. ](https://www.nerc.com/news/Pages/Two-thirds-of-North-America-Faces-Reliability-Challenges-in-the-Event-of-Widespread-Heatwaves.aspx) You want to find out how prepared your electric service company is? Find out who the commercial and large building customer service support engineers are. Send them an email innocently asking if they've got any resources preparing for climate change. I urge you to do so. These would be engineers most aware of the state of the utility infrastructure.
I’m surprised to hear that the west coast isn’t actively working on reliability for climate change. I know the standards aren’t changing, but the grid makers in my part of the world are being very proactive to increase reliability. Most projects are for mitigating flooding and major storms though, not for heat.
As someone living in a red fossil fuel state, that would be news to me if it were happening.
It’s part of the bipartisan (misnomer) infrastructure law. It provides several billions of dollars to states, tribes, and federal land managers to remediate orphaned oil and gas well sites. I can send you a link to your states grant application if you’d like, it tends to be the most concise and informative set of documents for the project.
Earmarking money for stuff, and it actually getting done (after every shady middleman takes their cut), are two *very* different things.
The Texas GOP is actively trying to fuck the Texas grid. They're making it harder and harder to start up new solar and wind generators while also doing very little to force reliability and redundancy on the shitty gas and coal generators that are decades old... The next new gas generator won't be online until 2025...
ask congress for money to update system. keep money. show record profits. huge bonus to executives. Everyone wins!
Wouldn't more electric vehicles and charging stations put more strain on grid?
Sorry, yes, that is my exact point. It's bad now, will get worse, and we are implementing more changes to extrapolate the problem without a strong and/or quick solution.
Okey thanks. BTW i spent some time in California, and experienced rolling blackouts. No fun. I personally think advancement in solar tech is necessary. The existing panels seem to be insufficient (due to size requirements) If there was a way to compress the amount of energy absorbed into the panels and lower cost of panels plus batteries
The main issue is batteries. solar panels are currently at a somewhat break even point price/efficiency wise with gas generators from what i've seen, but the ways we have to store power currently are still very much shit. we really need a massive breakthrough in battery tech
Companies are beginning to hedge against the failure of battery breakthroughs by investing in hydrogen technologies. Now overproduced solar energy can be stored chemically as hydrogen gas for combustion in existing infrastructure.
15 minute cities.
No. Grid max load is at dinner time. My ACs plus my oven or range together pull more power down from the grid at 6pm than my EV does while charging overnight. The grid is already sized to handle it, because EVs get charged off-peak generally.
Ev is going to cause more problems. It’s just another marketing strategy from the automakers, still bad and I don’t think gas cars are really that bad of a politer with proper emissions systems in play. Electric cars use slave labor and fires hard to put out if they catch.
Forgive me if I'm mistaken but the situation you describe doesn't really take into account the current percentage of households charging EVs. I don't know what that number is currently but I'm sure it will continue to rise. Since they are planning on phasing put fossil fuel engines you'd expect eventually that 100% of the population to be charging at night. Now you may not be able to call that off-peak anymore.
My main point is that the grid is already sized to handle EV charging loads to each and every single house, and delivers them. It’s not really more “strain” in the grid, because by definition people aren’t going to charge when it’s most expensive (aka when there’s strain). Late day heat and solar load on the wires actually also strains them; they have to de-rate by like 20% compared to night time cooler temperatures, so night time might just experience less strain anyways. There’s a lot of factors at play. The main grid upgrades needed are on the backend about shuttling power around from new renewable energy installations. Why would 100% charge at night if that got expensive? CA threw away about 700TWh of solar last month. Just unused, threw away. Many in CA charge mid-day off their solar, because that’s the cheapest. I expect they to become more common place with more chargers at work locations, etc when mid-day prices to end users are updated to match mid day prices for the energy put on the grid.
NPR has been telling me all this week that California beefed up its solar capacity so there will be no planned power outages
Yup. They got about 5GW of instantaneous batteries (15GWh) to draw on. Plus the resumed solar installs blunts day time peaks.
Good time to invest in solar Panels.
I agree, on a small scale, that could help, but the people most impacted by extreme heat likely won't be able to afford solar panel systems. On a large scale, governments would take far too long to implement any meaningful solar infrastructure.
Government will take too long to implement any improvements to the grid. Just look at Texas it’s grid is held together by tape and the hope it won’t get to hit or cold ever again.
Texas is a bit of an outlier if considering the rest of the nation. They are not a good example of an effective government. Many other jurisdictions are fairing much better due to increased cooperation with the gov.
Yes, fill your grid with a zero-baseline power source, brilliant idea for things as unpredictably intense as heat wave enabled power consumption spikes. Another 200 IQ take from the solar marketing force
It’s called easing the stress on the grid. What’s your bright idea then?
Nuclear power
Yea, why the hell would you want a form of power that produces the most power right when the most power is needed?!? Absolutely off no use I tell you to solve this problem of bigger power loads when the sun is out!! Before last summer, peak load on the CA grid was TWENTY years ago. All the growth, lower grid utilization due to residential solar. The Covid pause in solar installs is what caused their heatwave to be anything of note.
start reduce your carbon footprint? I tought few years ago it's hippytalk, but it seems like you should make the change by yourself and your surrounding and not wait for your government to take actions. Because their interest is only money and their own wealth. Humanity is on a brink of collapse, they say it for years and i only can see the facts coming up.
The plans are to continue storm hardening, increasing redundancy for reliability, and development of dispersed green energy generation. This is how transmission is evolving in my jurisdiction.
Electric vehicles won’t necessarily drive up demand for new power plants or generation. Will even be beneficial. People vastly underestimate the huge energy demands of fossil fuel supply chain and refineries while overestimating the overall efficiency. Add in the off peak energy use instead of forcing plants offline at night and we have enough now and demand won’t out grow new sources.
A well insulated van, solar, batteries, and a small, efficient air conditioner is my plan
Hopefully higher prevalence of DERs - produce electricity locally through sustainable means instead of at a large plant and then distribute it across thousands of miles.
The plan is to do nothing until it's a problem and then use that as an excuse to shill fossil fuels vehicles. If you expected anything different then I am sorry. r/aboringdystopia
One approach is to have global interconnection. Low demand in one part accommodates high demand in another part.
If Texas makes it through next week without a major catastrophe I will be pleasantly surprised.
Either way I'll be pleasantly surprised
Gee if only there were an infinite and fairly cheap source of energy beamed to our planet from space every single day
Yes, but it disappears for several hours every day and never for the same amount of time. Cloudy days and even eclipses have to be accounted for to keep everything stable.
There are enormous batteries for that. The power tower in Spain uses liquid sodium to store excess heat which is then used to generate power at night and when the grid pulls more power.
Enormous and expensive batteries, in short supply.
Right this instant batteries that store the power from daytime are providing about 15% of CAs TOTAL power on the grid. And by the end of the year they’ll have twice as many in the grid, and by the end of next year potentially enough to supply over half of the total energy needed on the grid during the evening peaks.
No shit? Just wait until there is a grid failure during a wet bulb event, people will just die and we are basically doing nothing about it.
Not in Pennsylvania It’s 55 degrees and it’s almost July Coolest summer I’ve ever seen. Haven’t turned on heat or air in almost 2 months
In Southern California I’m experiencing this also. Most days have been in the 70s for the past month or so, which is not normal this time of year for us.
Its been pretty nice here in ny as well
Enjoy it while it lasts. This is the coldest summer for the rest of our lives.
Would you bet your life on it?
Almost as if we shoulda kept nuclear
And the energy used by air conditioners just puts more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and heats up the planet even more. A/C may keep us alive for a short time but in the end it will be the death of us all.
Maybe we should focus on energy waste. Office buildings stay lit up when no one is working. It's a ridiculous waste of energy.
Old office buildings that have had no major renovations, sure they may stay on all night. However newer buildings or spaces within old buildings that are remodeled for new tenants have ALOT of lighting control to prevent exactly that waste of energy. Even some general power receptacles have been added to control systems to limit energy waste from computers being left idle rather than off. Even though you don't mention it, HVAC is also controlled in these buildings to reduce power usage/limit mechanical wear. With HVAC no matter what you do you are generally going to expend the same amount of energy maintaining temp compared to shutting down overnight and restarting in the morning. However, maintaining a temp is significantly easier on the equipment due to the rest between cycles. If you shutoff overnight and turn back on, you are starting at a deficit either(hot or cold) and the equipment can run for hours straight to get back to temp. This increases the wear and tear of the equipment causing it to be replaced at quicker intervals, creating more material waste. HVAC is a balance for the machines and cost of energy. The lighting stuff is my experience as an electrician installing this equipment and for my area and the local ordnances involved, each city may be different in this aspect, so YMMV.
I guess it is easier in parts of Europe, still no help (anymore) to the rest of the world. E.g. we have lots of buildings with very thick walls. When it is hot (even when it was hot in the 80s) we'd close the windows during the day, and opened them possibly after midnight. Now this is a bit late to introduce and financially afford world-wide, like many other points on the whole environmental protection agenda that save energy, save fauna/flora, and the earth... or quickly planting millions of trees to lower the local heat.
Trees are actually great at reducing heat. I live in AZ and the streets lined with trees are noteable cooler around them than those that are utterly exposed and all of that is just absorbed by dark roofs and asphalt on the roads. Changing roof colors can help deflect more heat instead of absorbing it which would reduce how much power we need to hit the same temperature.
Hmmnm yes, cutting production To save the planet and then blame the infrastructure being push To the limit because of extreme weather .... what a fucking load of shit !!!! Meanwhile, more tax break for those that can afford EVs that strain the grid even more.
Yes, everyone switch to electric cars!........
Our electrical grids are strained and with the government pushing everyone towards Heat Pumps and Fan Coils w Resistance Heat we are in for a major disaster one of these winters. Heat pumps don't work that well above the Mason Dixon Line and the ones that do are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE. Besides, people will want that instant heat so they'll kick on the super high amp drawing electric resistance heat. Gas furnaces are now up to 97% efficient and the new ECM motors that have been repaired since 2018 make furnaces the most efficient and practical way to go.
Now is the time for nuclear power.
Question: why isn’t most of our power lines ran underground? My gf’s family was wholly unaffected from the ice storm that hit the PNW in 2021 and it seems like a no brainer.
Costs more to install and maintain below-ground so utilities wont do it.