Second day of rolling blackouts starts

Thu Jan 18 19:47:07 UTC 2001

Stretching WAAAAYYY back in my power engineering days 15 years ago ...

Anyone know the name of the proposed interconnect between east and west where they were going to connect the Eastern grid and Western grid together with a very short, very high cap DC line?

The main issue, which may or may not still be one, is that the East half of the US couldn't help because their gird is totally separate and out of phase with the Western grid.

I wonder if thats still the case today and if so, what difference it could make if they could wheel power into the West from excess capacity (if any) from the east.

Eric

At 11:00 AM 1/18/01 -0800, Derek J. Balling wrote:

>At 10:45 AM -0800 1/18/01, Roeland Meyer wrote:
>>What's wrong with this picture? I see the generators, holding a shotgun at
>>PG&E's neck, and telling the state that they'll pull the triggers if the
>>state doesn't come up with the dough. They're not even wearing a mask! Yet,
>>no one is seeing anything wrong with this and they're acting like it's
>>PG&E's fault.
>
>Welcome to the PRC, ... Peoples' Republic of China^WCalifornia.
>
>I pointed out to a co-worker that the "state-mandated
>low-rate,low-supply,high-demand" power problem was tried in most parts of
>the former Soviet Union... and those citizens prepare for winters by
>stocking up on heating supplies as they "Expect" power to go out. This was
>a known-failed experiment before CA tried it.
>
>But, California essentially tried the same thing... high-demand, low-rate,
>and (through AQMD and other fun things) low-supply. They (through doing
>this) convinced people that they have a "right" to expect power at
>below-market-value. Who can blame PG&E's suppliers for being on the
>"winning side" of a supply-side-economics issue? Who can blame PG&E for
>being handcuffed by the state's rules? The people of California can, for
>some reason that boggles this CA resident.
>
>But maybe that's cuz I'm not a native. It seems that the natives are all
>upset, and the "non-native" folks I work with tend to blame California
>residents themselves for voting/etc. that put the price-fixes in place.
>"You wanted it, you got it, see how stupid it was? Now pay the price and
>move on instead of whining".
>
>Seem to be in the minority here though. ;-)
>
>D
>(This is operational, insofar as its good advice that "if you want to have
>consistent power for your colo, you should consider states that don't do
>silly things to power companies". ;-)  )
>
>-- 
>+---------------------+-----------------------------------------+
>| dredd at megacity.org  | "Conan! What is best in life?"          |
>|  Derek J. Balling   | "To crush your enemies, see them        |
>|                     |    driven before you, and to hear the   |
>|                     |    lamentation of their women!"         |
>+---------------------+-----------------------------------------+

==========================================================================
  Eric Germann                                        Inacom Info Systems
  egermann at inacomlima.com                             Lima, OH 45801
                                                      Ph:  419 331 9050
  ICQ:  41927048                                      Fax: 419 331 9302

"It is so easy to miss pretty trivial solutions to problems deemed
complicated.  The goal of a scientist is to find an interesting problem,
and live off it for a while.  The goal of an engineer is to evade
interesting problems :)"  -- Vadim Antonov <avg at kotovnik.com> on NANOG