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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the power-to-the-people dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @05:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @05:41PM (#465115)

    Infrastructure. You really can't overbuild infrastructure.

    You can overdo everything, and people who think you can't aren't thinking with an appropriate engineering mindframe. To make it more obvious...

    Safety. You can't be too safe. If even one life is saved, if just one terrorist is caught, then it's worth it. Think of the children!

    That statement has obvious problems which I'm sure you can identify. Apply the exact same logic to infrastructure building (i.e. "what do you need to forego to get that extra bit of production?").

    The proper way to say the sentiment you are saying is, "a 21% margin is not too cautious. As seen by these facts and figures, that will lead to a brownout on average every ___ years, which is not worth it. We should be targeting a safety margin of ___%, which will result in brownouts every ___ years." For bonus points, include a statement of, "Estimate cost/inconvenience/etc of these brownouts would be ___, which is more than the infrastructure cost of ___. Spending ____ more to get ____ margin would instead cause brownout costs to be ___, which is more an improvement than the costs."