http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-25-california-blackouts_x.htm

Interesting that a guy from the UK should post this.
Seriously though, you have to say that having temperatures like that, affects the oil in the transformers as it does the lines that convey the energy, less dissipation= quicker shutdown.
But one thing that a lot of people don't realise is the fact that you have to sectionalise the loads as you bring them back on-line, bringing all that back on at once would cause an ever bigger crash than what caused the original fault.

SCE actually shut down three cities in the So. San Jauquin Valley to help unload the system for LA.

Spokesman for SCE said he got a call to shut them down and had no idea why his Company woud do that. A very well informed individual.

Rob

Yes, that very same outage cut my workday short.. working in Carlsbad, Ca.. Oh well made for a nice quiet afternoon. As an aside, this is just a sign of things to come for all of us in San Diego county... what with all the developement going on in the hot inland interior- most of it high-end luxury homes with 2,3, and even 4 A/C units (for a freakin' residential house!?!?!- have we gone insane around here??) we are going to see more and more of this in the coming years I fear. While many of the lighting schemes I have seen and helped install in some of these "Mc-Mansions" are quite beautiful, elaborate and- I can't complain about this part, profitable- when you consider that similar watthour usage is going on up and down the streets of these gated communities 200-300 times over, depending on the size of the community, the sheer wastefulness of it seems downright obscene. All that usage so that the nintendo-generation can veg-out on the couch eating chips in front of the plasma screen in air-conditioned comfort.....

Part of the problem is the old myth that it costs more to cool down a house in the evening when you get home than it is to run the A/C at your favorite temperature all day. When you are talking about these McMansions with five or six totally unused rooms that are cooled 24/7 it adds up fast.
I expect to see some sort of electricity rationing within a decade.
A household that uses more than a megawatt/hr a month per person is starting to get unreasonable and that is not an unusual usage.

Hmmm, Thats interesting.. I haven't noticed any disruptions over here in the PG&E area of the San Joaquin Valley (Bakersfield/Rosedale), but it has been <i>seriously</i> hot here this summer with daytime temps peaking around 105°F-111°F for the majority. I saw Huntington Beach listed as a blackout city, which coincidentally wasn't affected by the blackouts in '01 when I lived there...

New houses are going up at a blistering pace out here, and I know all the utilities are having a fair amount or stress to keep up with the area growth.. (SBC just had to do a HUGE equiptment upgrade in my area because of lack of capacity/new construction) PG&E seems to be pulling new line all over as well...

Randy

It was Visaila,Tulare & Porterville areas. All Edison territory.

Troll, sometimes it's more economical to heat and cool sections of a house separately, in zones, similarly to the way we use sub-panels in a large installation, than one large zone.

A single, large HVAC system could be designed to condition a large house, but the cost could exceed several, smaller systems. Plus upstairs may require more cooling; downstairs more heating.

And there/s the matter of distribution. There can be more energy lost in extensive ductwork due both to thermal and friction losses, than lost in the cost of multiple zones.

Get ready for this to become worse before it gets better...a lot worse.

Eco nuts have done everything- and with some success- to prevent the utilisation of existing, developed resources, block the exploitation of new ones, prevent the building of refineries, pipelines, and power plants. The only places with new nuclear plants are North Korea and Iran.
Even the construction of new power lines is opposed- can't have those ugly things here! Bury them? Heck, no- might upset the environment.

Any rate increase is opposed vehemently- no matter that new lines, and maintenance costs money.

Meanwhile, a schizo court has ruled that Enron contracts must continue to be paid off- even though Enron's contracting practices set a new standard of corruption. THAT is surely the way to punish Ken!

At this rate, it won't be long, and the "Twilight Zone" will look like a documentary.

It looks like the West is finally close to the day of reckoning with the laws of supply and demand.

People moving into the deserts of California, Nevada, etc on a mass scale can only spell disaster for the electrical supply infrastructure.

It's funny, everyone talks about the nice weather in Califonia but many people forget about the hot interior that requires constant air conditioning in the summer. And then there's Las Vegas and Phoenix and even Texas. I don't even want to think about what's coming.

Peter

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.