RE: California power - its cold, its dark
Thanks for the links guys. Now, here's the summary. 1) California power load is still 10,000 MW below peak delivery of last Summer. 2) Slightly over 1/3 of the generation plants are down for "maintenance". 3) There was an unplanned 500 KW outage, which was compensated for by shuting down the pumps of the California Aquaduct sytem temporarily. 1) Blame is being placed on the early and extra cold winter. However, a quick perusal of the Farmers Almanac shows that this is expected and no surprise, or shouldn't be. 2) The REAL blame probably rests on the head of the yahoo that allowed so many plants to go on scheduled maintenance at the same time. 3) Shutting down the aquaduct is real bad. Some of Bill Mullholland's design depends on siphon effect and if the siphon breaks it takes weeks of massive power usage in order to resore it. Ergo, they can't shut it down too long or it'll cost too much power to bring it back up. Leaving it down isn't an option, too many people depend on that water. It's looking more like a management screw-up and more people are begining to realize it. The deregulators were so busy deregulating that future usage planning was foregone. Forcing the local utilities to sell off their generators may not have been very smart either. Current power capacity scheduling was also bungled. The timing can only be either gross incompetance or Machiavallien cunning. Thank you all for the additional links. I was actually researching this since a few days ago. Some of us are preparing grounds for suit, independently, in the event that they start long rolling black-outs. We have six-hours worth of bats, so we should be okay. But, our clients don't.
-----Original Message----- From: Nathan Stratton [mailto:nathan@robotics.net] Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 7:47 PM To: Sean Donelan Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: California power - its cold, its dark
On 7 Dec 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:
Approximately one-third of California's power generating capacitiy is off-line. The California system operator has called a "stage 3" power alert, requiring *interruptiable* customers be interrupted until 10pm tonight. They are not instituting rotating blackouts of other customers at this time.
Any word on the cause of the outage, did several reactors scram at the same time or is this a transmission issue?
<> Nathan Stratton CTO, Exario Networks, Inc. nathan@robotics.net nathan@exario.net http://www.robotics.net http://www.exario.net
On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Roeland Meyer wrote:
Thanks for the links guys. Now, here's the summary.
1) California power load is still 10,000 MW below peak delivery of last Summer.
What happens next summer when there will be more demand? I don't see any new generation coming online anytime soon. I guess it is time to look at new turbine technology.
2) Slightly over 1/3 of the generation plants are down for "maintenance".
Sure :-) Lets make some money on the spot market time. One odd thing I did notice is that my voltage graphs in CA are very close to the load graphs on the caiso website.
<> Nathan Stratton CTO, Exario Networks, Inc. nathan@robotics.net nathan@exario.net http://www.robotics.net http://www.exario.net
I hear there are many plants offline also, there apparently is a system in place that accounts for annual environmental emissions, and some plants have met their annual allottment. My take is its all a plan by left wing environmentalist wackos to put up so many roadblocks that plants cant be built. I hear 2 were just approved, but there have been none built in a very long time, despite the population in the sun belt. In summary:poor management as pointed out earlie. Brian On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, Nathan Stratton wrote:
On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Roeland Meyer wrote:
Thanks for the links guys. Now, here's the summary.
1) California power load is still 10,000 MW below peak delivery of last Summer.
What happens next summer when there will be more demand? I don't see any new generation coming online anytime soon. I guess it is time to look at new turbine technology.
2) Slightly over 1/3 of the generation plants are down for "maintenance".
Sure :-) Lets make some money on the spot market time.
One odd thing I did notice is that my voltage graphs in CA are very close to the load graphs on the caiso website.
<> Nathan Stratton CTO, Exario Networks, Inc. nathan@robotics.net nathan@exario.net http://www.robotics.net http://www.exario.net
On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Brian W. wrote:
I hear there are many plants offline also, there apparently is a system in place that accounts for annual environmental emissions, and some plants have met their annual allottment. My take is its all a plan by left wing environmentalist wackos to put up so many roadblocks that plants cant be built. I hear 2 were just approved, but there have been none built in a very long time, despite the population in the sun belt.
As others have said, it just makes things worse when several thousand generators all come online. Does anyone know if a plant that has used their annual allottment can be brought online if you reach a stage 3 emergency?
<> Nathan Stratton CTO, Exario Networks, Inc. nathan@robotics.net nathan@exario.net http://www.robotics.net http://www.exario.net
Roeland, I think you're confusing the California Aqueduct with the "Los Angeles Aqueduct". The LA Aqueduct's (designed by William Mullholland, constructed 1907-1913) gravity-flow contruction requires no pumps. It diverts eastern Sierra mountain streams from the Owens Valley and Mono Lake basin to reservoirs in the metro Los Angeles area. Joe Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com> wrote:
Thanks for the links guys. Now, here's the summary.
1) California power load is still 10,000 MW below peak delivery of last Summer. 2) Slightly over 1/3 of the generation plants are down for "maintenance". 3) There was an unplanned 500 KW outage, which was compensated for by shuting down the pumps of the California Aquaduct sytem temporarily.
1) Blame is being placed on the early and extra cold winter. However, a quick perusal of the Farmers Almanac shows that this is expected and no surprise, or shouldn't be. 2) The REAL blame probably rests on the head of the yahoo that allowed so many plants to go on scheduled maintenance at the same time. 3) Shutting down the aquaduct is real bad. Some of Bill Mullholland's design depends on siphon effect and if the siphon breaks it takes weeks of massive power usage in order to resore it. Ergo, they can't shut it down too long or it'll cost too much power to bring it back up. Leaving it down isn't an option, too many people depend on that water.
It's looking more like a management screw-up and more people are begining to realize it. The deregulators were so busy deregulating that future usage planning was foregone. Forcing the local utilities to sell off their generators may not have been very smart either. Current power capacity scheduling was also bungled. The timing can only be either gross incompetance or Machiavallien cunning.
Thank you all for the additional links. I was actually researching this since a few days ago. Some of us are preparing grounds for suit, independently, in the event that they start long rolling black-outs. We have six-hours worth of bats, so we should be okay. But, our clients don't.
-----Original Message----- From: Nathan Stratton [mailto:nathan@robotics.net] Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 7:47 PM To: Sean Donelan Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: California power - its cold, its dark
On 7 Dec 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:
Approximately one-third of California's power generating capacitiy is off-line. The California system operator has called a "stage 3" power alert, requiring *interruptiable* customers be interrupted until 10pm tonight. They are not instituting rotating blackouts of other customers at this time.
Any word on the cause of the outage, did several reactors scram at the same time or is this a transmission issue?
<> Nathan Stratton CTO, Exario Networks, Inc. nathan@robotics.net nathan@exario.net http://www.robotics.net http://www.exario.net
-- Joe McGuckin ViaNet Communications 994 San Antonio Road Palo Alto, CA 94303 Phone: 650-969-2203 Cell: 650-207-0372 Fax: 650-969-2124
Joe McGuckin wrote:
Roeland,
I think you're confusing the California Aqueduct with the "Los Angeles Aqueduct". The LA Aqueduct's (designed by William Mullholland, constructed 1907-1913) gravity-flow contruction requires no pumps. It diverts eastern Sierra mountain streams from the Owens Valley and Mono Lake basin to reservoirs in the metro Los Angeles area.
Joe
[Off topic tid-bit] The water rights for this were bought secretly (& cheaply) by Mullholland using front corporations and outside agents. Farmers thought they were selling something of no value to fools, because how could the purchasers ever actually use the water without owning the land ? When the farmers in the Owens Valley found out what was really going on, they tried to dynamite the Aqueduct, because, in that area, no water rights means no crops. Now, if I could just buy bandwidth that way... Regards Marshall Eubanks Multicast Technologies, Inc. 10301 Democracy Lane, Suite 201 Fairfax, Virginia 22030 Phone : 703-293-9624 Fax : 703-293-9609 e-mail : tme@on-the-i.com http://www.on-the-i.com
participants (5)
-
Brian W. -
Joe McGuckin -
Marshall Eubanks -
Nathan Stratton -
Roeland Meyer