ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Short blackout - So. California

I imagine when energy gets expensive enough these savings schemes will start to be popular but every time I have seen one of these high tech houses, a few years down the road, everything is broke, nobody knows how to fix it, the owner hasn't really saved a dime and the contractor is advising them the cheapest fix is to rip out all that "crap" and install the system he sells a dozen of a week.
The only things I will install will be fairly low tech and easy to get along without.

If it were not for imported water, all of So CA would be a desert.

This is not the West's creation, but the creation of all the people that migrate here from other places. "Where are you from?" is a common question people ask each other here. "I Love (fill in location)" bumper stickers abound.

None of these people bring any infrastructure here with them, and they keep coming in droves like lemmings to the sea.

Here's a nice try by SoCA Edison: click here , but as long as there is such an anti-nuclear power paranoia, it will be a losing battle. Nuclear generating stations and water desalination plants could save the day.

Just My Opinion

The biggest problem is that most people think that the supply of electricity is an endless commodity. I live in Alice Springs in the centre of Australia where in the last 12 months a new 16MW genset has been bought online to supplement the existing power supply to give more power for Alice Springs with our new maximum capacity of 53 MW (population approx 28 500). The maximum demand has been recorded at 41MW & expected to reach the 53MW limit by the year 2017.

The culprit: split system refrigerated aircon units. These are now cheap enough (under AU$500 for a small one) to fit one to each bedroom of our house. A small 1HP unit has a run current of 5.0A @ 240V so four of these units running places an extra 5kW load on the grid. The problem the supply authority had was working out where all the extra power was going. As the units can be easily installed by anyone that can drill holes & wave a spanner, they popped up all over the place & because some come with 3-pin plugs on the supply lead, just plug them in & away they go.

There are more & more gadgets that people 'must have' so the demand for power will continue to increase until one day it will just all fall into a big hole...thiry years ago no-one would of dreamed of fitting homes out with 4-way power outlets when a double was an oddity in most homes back in the 1970s.