California public safety power shutdowns

Fri Oct 11 15:17:38 UTC 2019

On 10/11/19 8:01 AM, Ethan O'Toole wrote:
>> request went all the way to the Court.  The reason for access?  They ran
>> the electronics on bottled propane (NOT mains power AC) and they needed
>> to swap full tanks for the empties.  This was several months into my
>> stint on that site.
>> Not all generators run on diesel, I learned.
> 
> You can drive a gasoline generator with natural gas and propane, there
> is just less energy so it takes more of those fuels to get the same
> energy output.
> 
> There are also fuel cells that take LPG.
> 
> Was this a really tiny microcell? I wouldn't think they could run for
> months on bottled LPG if there is any kind of real load at the site.
> 
>                 - Ethan

Not a tiny microcell.  The casino in question is located in Incline
Village, on the shore of Lake Tahoe and in prime ski country.  The
downside of ski country is that you have fairly frequent power outages
in winter due to weather, plus the long haul through mountains of fair
capacity transmission lines.

Now I could be mistaken, and the propane was for a stand-by generator.