Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
California has a big — and growing — glut of power, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times has found. The state's power plants are on track to be able to produce at least 21% more electricity than it needs by 2020, based on official estimates. And that doesn't even count the soaring production of electricity by rooftop solar panels that has added to the surplus.
[...] This translates into a staggering bill. Although California uses 2.6% less electricity annually from the power grid now than in 2008, residential and business customers together pay $6.8 billion more for power than they did then. The added cost to customers will total many billions of dollars over the next two decades, because regulators have approved higher rates for years to come so utilities can recoup the expense of building and maintaining the new plants, transmission lines and related equipment, even if their power isn't needed.
How this came about is a tale of what critics call misguided and inept decision-making by state utility regulators, who have ignored repeated warnings going back a decade about a looming power glut.
[...] California utilities are "constantly crying wolf that we're always short of power and have all this need," said Bill Powers, a San Diego-based engineer and consumer advocate who has filed repeated objections with regulators to try to stop the approval of new plants. They are needlessly trying to attain a level of reliability that is a worst-case "act of God standard," he said.
Even with the growing glut of electricity, consumer critics have found that it is difficult to block the [Public Utilities Commission] (PUC) from approving new ones.
In 2010, regulators considered a request by [Pacific Gas and Electric Co.] (PG&E) to build a $1.15-billion power plant in Contra Costa County east of San Francisco, over objections that there wasn't sufficient demand for its power. One skeptic was PUC commissioner Dian Grueneich. She warned that the plant wasn't needed and its construction would lead to higher electricity rates for consumers — on top of the 28% increase the PUC had allowed for PG&E over the previous five years.
[...] Recent efforts to get courts to block several other PUC-approved plants have failed, however, so the projects are moving forward.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by linkdude64 on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:37PM
"Infrastructure. You really can't overbuild infrastructure."
This, this, and this.
If California was without power for several days, it would cost the country untold amounts more than the electricity.
" 21% more electricity than it needs by 2020" ?? Is that all?! I would say that is, if anything, a conservative margin to give ourselves.
The writer of this article is painfully unaware of how much damage to the economy one person with a pair of bolt cutters and intimate knowledge of the power grid could do in a matter of hours.
So much of global society is held together by nothing else but the absolute miracle that far less than 1% of people born are truly sociopathic, and so security through obscurity remains practically sufficient. It is exactly how we keeping getting away with such woeful insecurity in everything from our browsers, to our ATMs, to our governments - the power grid is no exception, and is very near the literal foundations of those previously listed systems.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:48PM
21% more electricity than it needs by 2020" ?? Is that all?! I would say that is, if anything, a conservative margin to give ourselves.
RTFA already.
Industry standard margin is 9-10%
California power consumption has been essentially flat since 2009 due to improved efficiency.
Your thinking is the brainlessness that leads to ridiculous airport security procedures - "you can never be too safe!" But everything has a price. What's the point of spending a TON of money on something that you will never need?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:04PM
That sort of depends. If the over-capacity is in the form of redundancy, then it might be quite reasonable given that earthquakes can wipe out facilities, and they take awhile to rebuild. But if it is done correctly 20% margin should be ample. At that point, or even before, you need to start worrying a lot more about infrastructure and distribution. And being adapted to lots of small points of generation, like solar or wind farms.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday February 09 2017, @01:17AM
Yes, you need to worry, but not for the reasons you think.
A true story about power and grid (or was it greed?) set in Australia context
2014 Power corrupts [themonthly.com.au]
2015 - The result [abc.net.au]
2016 - Hazelwood power station: Closure of plant to leave hundreds jobless [abc.net.au]
early 2017 - Battery storage: Is Australia on track to be the world’s biggest market? [onestepoffthegrid.com.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Alphatool on Thursday February 09 2017, @11:40AM
It's also worth mentioning the ongoing [wattclarity.com.au]lack of peak supply [wattclarity.com.au] that has arisen in Australia, even with the energy revolution you mention.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 09 2017, @12:42PM
With 6000-7000 total battery installations, this is to be expected - it's the "early adopters" phase.
And it will continue until the number of installations steps into the mid-high 100ks range - it will require the battery prices to go down significantly, though - i.e. get to the mainstream stage. The same happened with the PV panels - 10 years ago, the prices were over $10,000 for a decent sized installation. Now, one can get a 5kW worth of panels + inverter + installation on under $5,000.
But... the straw that broke the camel's back (and convinced Aussies to really consider solar panels) was the hike in electricity prices for "grids to nowhere" the greedy distributors charged. It what started the death spiral - the less people buy power from you, the higher prices you need to stay viable. The higher prices, the more people will seriously consider going off-grid.
What happened has less to do with the "green feeling" and more with enough technological progress to allow the consumer to say "F... you, I'll do it myself".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford