Blackouts in California will occur for another 10 years: what threatens the climate - ForumDaily
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Blackouts in California will occur for another 10 years: what threatens the climate

According to a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Corp, residents of California will regularly remain without electricity for 10 years, this will be done as a measure to prevent a fire near power lines. Writes about it Los Angeles Times.

Фото: Depositphotos

Although the need for large-scale outages should decrease every year, the head of the company, William Johnson, said: "I think that it will take about 10 years to achieve the maximum reduction in the threat of fire."

Between June and early October 2019, PG&E conducted four outages. The largest — and most criticized — was from Oct. 9 to Oct. 12, affecting 738 customers in 000 counties.

The food in the fridges went bad, the traffic lights did not work, the batteries ran out on mobile phones, and the hospitals switched to emergency generators.

“What we saw during the PG&E outage should not happen again,” said Maribel Badger. “Lack of electricity puts lives at risk.”

Badger also noted that "PG&E was not fully prepared for such a massive power outage."

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During the planned outage, the company’s website crashed, and customers unsuccessfully tried to get to the site by any means to obtain information.

Johnson acknowledged the inadequacy of PG&E's actions while defending the goal behind them. He also stressed that the decision to turn off the power was taken in consultation with the National Meteorological Service and the Emergency Management Agency.

During a shutdown, maximum gusts of wind exceeded 45 miles per hour (72,4 km / h) in the 16 affected counties. There were no fires, but more than 100 cases of damage were discovered during inspections, including from trees and branches.

“Any of these incidents could have been a potential fire source,” Johnson wrote, adding that “the vast majority of customers had power restored within 48 hours of the outage.”

In his speech to the commission, Johnson outlined a long list of measures taken by companies to limit the duration of outages. He said that the utility would gradually “partition” the equipment so that it could shut off smaller sections of the network at the same time, and such actions would take years.

“We know there is much that needs to be improved, including customer notifications, map accuracy, website performance, and the need to limit the scope of these outages as much as possible,” he wrote to the governor.

California Governor Gavin Newsom sharply criticized the company.

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Compensation to clients is pending for a utility company that already owes billions of dollars in liability for past California fires related to its equipment, including last year’s camp fire, killing more than 80 people and destroying an entire city in the north California

“Making the right safety decision is not the same as executing that decision correctly,” he told the commission.

Mass blackouts could exacerbate climate change

Climate change plans by the state depend on a stable electricity grid that provides clean electricity for cars, homes, and businesses. The new reality of mass blackouts can frustrate these plans, writes Los Angeles Times.

This situation could be complicated by efforts to “electrify everything,” a mantra adopted by a growing number of climate activists and figures in the state.

The main idea is that as the electricity supply becomes cleaner - more than half of California's electricity came from clean sources in 2018, and the state promises to achieve 100% by 2045.

The natural gas industry, citing power outages due to public safety, warns that electrifying buildings can be a big mistake.

No easy answers

These outages could have “serious potential negative consequences,” said Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who serves on the board of the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the grid.

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“For this reason, it is important to not let reliability issues get in the way of electrification,” says Borenstein and several other energy experts.

They note that many gas appliances really need electricity to work, such as smart thermostats like Google Nest. Although gas fireplaces and hobs work during a power outage, gas stoves generally do not work. Also, gas water heaters do not work if they do not have a backup battery.

Proponents of electrification also argue that removing gas from homes and businesses will take decades. On the other hand, blackouts for public safety may become less common over the course of several years as electricity companies strengthen their infrastructure.

“Gas pipelines have their own reliability problems,” says Maximilian Auffhammer, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. He cited a PG&E pipeline explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno in 2010 and a significant methane leak at SoCalGas' Aliso Canyon storage facility in 2015-2016.

“Nothing is perfect. There is no completely safe way to deliver electricity or gas to people's homes,” Auffhammer said.

Asked about the shutdowns, SoCalGas spokesman Chris Gilbride said, “It is becoming increasingly clear that the state needs “not just a simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach to building energy use, but one that balances climate goals with the diverse needs of California's 40 million residents.”

“This is not a debate about which appliances work best in the event of a power outage or a natural gas outage,” Gilbride said. “This is about how to best keep Californians safe and ensure every family has the affordable, reliable energy services they need.”

Proponents of electrification, however, see an impending battle between natural gas and electricity. They say local government and state policies should limit the effect of proactive blackouts and make sure California climate programs are not disrupted.

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Perhaps the most obvious solution is to help homes and businesses install backup power systems such as solar panels. According to Borenstein, the state must provide financing to low-income households that cannot afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on these systems.

Local government action

State energy providers, known as public choice aggregators, or CCAs, which currently serve about a quarter of California's residents, say they can play an important role in helping homes and businesses install rooftop solar systems to protect them from blackouts.

“Essentially, CCA will pay Sunrun for the right to consume energy from solar panel systems. And when the PG&E power grid goes down during a proactive power outage or other emergency, homes with solar panels will still have power,” said East Bay Executive Director Nick Chaset.

The company plans to significantly increase its purchase of similar solar energy storage resources. This time around, the CCA could make it a condition for prospective buyers to prioritize homes that are most likely to be hit by PG&E pre-power outages, and possibly customers who depend on medical devices that run on electricity.

Some experts are thinking about how to get PG&E and other commercial utilities to help support consumer-owned energy sources.

Utility consumers who reduce their dependence on the grid can avoid another electrification trap: The likelihood of higher electricity tariffs increases as PG&E and Edison spend billions of dollars insulating wires, pruning trees, building weather stations, and other measures to limit risk ignition from fires.

Mike O'Boyle, director of energy policy at Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based research firm, said electrification is key to California's climate goals. But consumers are already paying more for electricity than for gas. According to O'Boyle, the widening price gap could "tip the balance" against electrification.

“We need to have accessible, cheap, clean electricity,” he said. “If we don’t have that, it will hinder progress.”

Fires and power outages are far from the only challenges California faces as the state works toward a goal of 100% clean energy by 2045.

In the short term, energy regulators are concerned that the planned shutdown of three gas power plants in Southern California would jeopardize reliability by making the state too dependent on solar and wind power plants that only produce electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. In the long run, there is still no good solution on how to manage a network in which solar and wind power predominate, especially during periods when the sun and wind disappear for several days.

There is a Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant that can generate electricity around the clock and is California's only largest source of clean energy.

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Officials have approved an agreement between PG&E and environmental groups to replace nuclear power plants with a combination of renewable energy. Electricity companies apply time-varying tariffs to encourage people to use more energy during the day, when there is a lot of solar energy and less in the evening.

Electric cars and home batteries can help consumers balance their needs. Some experts also called for the expansion of demand response programs, in which utilities pay consumers to reduce consumption when additional capacity is needed on the network.

“Transitioning to an emissions-free grid will never be easy,” said Carl Zichella, western director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group. The threat posed by fires makes the job even more challenging, but possible, he said.

“This is something we cannot avoid. We have to prevent this,” Zichella said. “I don’t see any slowdown in work or interest in this.”

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