It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.
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California’s got a power shortgage? Gee, how’d that happen?
“Gov. Newsom leaped into “Blame” mode. Since demand was less than what was seen in July 2006, and no blackouts were needed then, why do we need them now? Newsom knows the answer – the stupid energy policies that he and Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown before him enacted – but instead promised an “investigation,” likely headed by a blue-ribbon panel, since he’s fond of such committees.
“The Cal-ISO Board of Governors weren’t ready to bend over and take Newsom’s wrath. They held a special telephone conference addressing the blackouts and spelling out the problems…. Cal-ISO CEO Steve Berberich explained that they’d warned the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that the state would need precisely the amount of power required Friday and weren’t given the authorizations they needed:
“We told the California Public Utilities Commission of a 4,700-MW need through 2022 and that gap started in 2020. Despite all that, only 3,300 MW was authorized for procurement and none starting until 2021.”
“While Cal-ISO attempted to import power to fill the demand, other western states were also in the midst of a heatwave and unable to export power to California. Board members explained that power importation isn’t a long-term solution…”
California is no longer able to import enough power to fill the void, [Berberich] said. To fix the problem, he added, resource adequacy must be reformed so that utilities and other load-serving entities have enough generation capacity to meet peak demand.
“… and that Cal-ISO can’t arrange for more capacity than CPUC dictates:”
“So, is there a problem with the amount of capacity CPUC allows/mandates? Why can’t California generate enough power for its needs or even the same amount of power the state generated in 2006?”
Some experts say California also is feeling the effects of dramatic changes in the way it produces electricity. Notably, the state relies a lot more heavily these days on solar power, a resource that is in ample supply during the day naturally fades as the sun goes down. Friday’s blackouts began shortly after 6:30 p.m., as solar supplies were disappearing.
While solar has grown in importance over the years, mainstay energy sources like natural gas-fired plants — which can run any time — account for a smaller portion of the state’s electricity supply as older plants have been mothballed.
“We have a lot less fossil fuel generation than we had in 2006,” said Severin Borenstein, an ISO board member and UC Berkeley energy economist.
And it’s not just electricity that California’s gone short of (or gasoline — which is next). There’s also water. Victor Davis Hanson in 2015 on California’s “Engineered Drought:” “[Jerry] Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population) to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more recent allowance of massive water diversions for fish and river enhancement, left no margin for error in a state now home to 40 million people.”
It’s important to remember in this election year that what happens in California doesn’t stay in California, it metastasizes east. Job destroying AB5, collapse of the electrical power grid, fuel shortages, they’re all on the Democrats’ national agenda.
