CSNbbs

Quote:While Gavin Newsom intends to debate Ron DeSantis about the supposed supremacy of California, the Golden State continues to offer embarrassing examples of the opposite.

As the Florida governor indicated after accepting the challenge, while he’s going to show up, people have already decided the argument with their feet. More and more people are leaving California, and it’s because of ridiculous, self-defeating policies like the one I’m about to share with you.

The setup for this is California’s failing electric grid, which has been so underpowered that citizens have had to deal with brown-outs and losses in electricity in ways that you typically only see in third-world countries. According to a new report provided by HotAir’s Ed Morrisey, the state’s largest electric company, PG&E, has a plan, though.

A fair warning that none of this is a parody, though it reads that way.

California’s largest electric utility PG&E wants to suck the batteries of electric-vehicle owners plugged into charging stations to stabilize the grid during unstable periods. The Ford F-150 already allows for bidirectional charging, but that was sold as a benefit to the owner as a kind of independent generator for households during blackouts. PG&E wants to use it to commandeer all EV batteries and use their power to prevent grid collapse:

It’s been said before, California’s power grid will have to expand in order to meet the demand for more energy. PG&E’s CEO Patricia Poppe has come up with an “unconventional” idea, using electric cars to send excess power back to the grid to prevent blackouts. …

Lawmakers in Sacramento are helping to move things along. For example, Senate Bill 233 would make bi-directional charging mandatory for all new electric vehicles.

Now the question is how quickly can that electrical connection be up and running in any ordinary home to make vehicle-to-grid a reality.

To be clear, this is not just an idea being pushed by the electric company, which is ostensibly private (though, is heavily regulated). California’s state government is also pushing this, with the legislature moving to pass Senate Bill 233, which would require all bi-directional charging “for all new electric vehicles.”

The idea behind this is that electric cars are sitting idle “95 percent” of the time. Thus, PG&E wants to transfer power from those cars’ batteries during peak times to stabilize the grid. The problems with that are numerous.

For one, how does that actually solve California’s problem of having a lack of energy? It’s the very definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul because, in the end, the same amount of power will still be used depending on how much one ultimately drives their electric vehicle. It’s also worth considering that none of this would be necessary if California wasn’t pushing everyone into electric vehicles.

It’s the most Democrat thing ever to create a problem out of thin air only to then double down on tyrannical mandates to try to mitigate the newly created problem with a “solution” that ultimately perpetuates the issue. Besides, what happens when people just start unplugging their cars after charging because they routinely find them drained of power when they need them the most?

Then there are the cost aspects to consider. While PG&E would presumably refund the cost of any power it sucks back out of electric vehicles, essentially making them an extension of the grid, batteries are only good for so many cycles. In other words, California’s new scheme would end up costing electric vehicle owners thousands of dollars in replacement costs by eating into the lifespan of their batteries. Does that sound like a good deal to anyone?

This is the problem with trying to shovel green energy initiatives on Americans before the infrastructure even exists to support it. The government and its corporate allies just continue to take more and more bites at the apple instead of reevaluating whether something is even sustainable. Sucking electric vehicles dry to stabilize the grid is a “solution” that will quickly eat itself. Unfortunately, learning the hard way has become a California tradition.

Link

(08-13-2023 11:39 AM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:While Gavin Newsom intends to debate Ron DeSantis about the supposed supremacy of California, the Golden State continues to offer embarrassing examples of the opposite.

As the Florida governor indicated after accepting the challenge, while he’s going to show up, people have already decided the argument with their feet. More and more people are leaving California, and it’s because of ridiculous, self-defeating policies like the one I’m about to share with you.

The setup for this is California’s failing electric grid, which has been so underpowered that citizens have had to deal with brown-outs and losses in electricity in ways that you typically only see in third-world countries. According to a new report provided by HotAir’s Ed Morrisey, the state’s largest electric company, PG&E, has a plan, though.

A fair warning that none of this is a parody, though it reads that way.

California’s largest electric utility PG&E wants to suck the batteries of electric-vehicle owners plugged into charging stations to stabilize the grid during unstable periods. The Ford F-150 already allows for bidirectional charging, but that was sold as a benefit to the owner as a kind of independent generator for households during blackouts. PG&E wants to use it to commandeer all EV batteries and use their power to prevent grid collapse:

It’s been said before, California’s power grid will have to expand in order to meet the demand for more energy. PG&E’s CEO Patricia Poppe has come up with an “unconventional” idea, using electric cars to send excess power back to the grid to prevent blackouts. …

Lawmakers in Sacramento are helping to move things along. For example, Senate Bill 233 would make bi-directional charging mandatory for all new electric vehicles.

Now the question is how quickly can that electrical connection be up and running in any ordinary home to make vehicle-to-grid a reality.

To be clear, this is not just an idea being pushed by the electric company, which is ostensibly private (though, is heavily regulated). California’s state government is also pushing this, with the legislature moving to pass Senate Bill 233, which would require all bi-directional charging “for all new electric vehicles.”

The idea behind this is that electric cars are sitting idle “95 percent” of the time. Thus, PG&E wants to transfer power from those cars’ batteries during peak times to stabilize the grid. The problems with that are numerous.

For one, how does that actually solve California’s problem of having a lack of energy? It’s the very definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul because, in the end, the same amount of power will still be used depending on how much one ultimately drives their electric vehicle. It’s also worth considering that none of this would be necessary if California wasn’t pushing everyone into electric vehicles.

It’s the most Democrat thing ever to create a problem out of thin air only to then double down on tyrannical mandates to try to mitigate the newly created problem with a “solution” that ultimately perpetuates the issue. Besides, what happens when people just start unplugging their cars after charging because they routinely find them drained of power when they need them the most?

Then there are the cost aspects to consider. While PG&E would presumably refund the cost of any power it sucks back out of electric vehicles, essentially making them an extension of the grid, batteries are only good for so many cycles. In other words, California’s new scheme would end up costing electric vehicle owners thousands of dollars in replacement costs by eating into the lifespan of their batteries. Does that sound like a good deal to anyone?

This is the problem with trying to shovel green energy initiatives on Americans before the infrastructure even exists to support it. The government and its corporate allies just continue to take more and more bites at the apple instead of reevaluating whether something is even sustainable. Sucking electric vehicles dry to stabilize the grid is a “solution” that will quickly eat itself. Unfortunately, learning the hard way has become a California tradition.

Link

Not shocked. Lots of people with "smart" thermostats were surprised to learn that some utility companies were able to take control of many of these "smart" thermostats during times of emergency in order to reduce demand on the grid.

No matter what you believe about climate change/global warming/global cooling/whatever, it makes absolutely no sense to anyone but a bureaucrat to mandate changing from a basically reliable system to a non-existent one, in the hope that somehow a miracle will suddenly materialize.

The one thing that really annoys me is comparisons to JFK and the moon race. The idea is that somehow when JFK gave his, "Why does Rice play Texas?" speech at Rice Stadium in 1962, he gave birth to a space program that landed a man on the moon by 1969. In reality, that space program was already in existence long before then. The USA already had 7 astronauts, 3 of them had already flown in space, and with a very cautious and risk-avoidant plan to land on the moon by about 1975. What JFK really did was to resolve an internal space race between NASA and a Redstone Arsenal team led by Werner von Braun. NASA wanted to launch from earth and go straight to the moon. Von Braun wanted to build a space station and go to the moon from there. Here is a video from 1955 of von Braun explaining his approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz7njI0wEIw

Von Braun's approach would have gotten to the moon around 1975, but could not meet the 1969 deadline, so JFK basically committed the USA to the NASA approach. The end of the decade was an acclerated schedule, even for NASA, that required taking more risks, and Gus Grissom and others paid the price for those risks. A number of my family worked for von Braun at Redstone, and I remember that they were pretty pissed off about the JFK speech.

Green energy technology today is nowhere near as advanced as space travel technology was in 1962. We didn't have everything in place to go to the moon back then, but at least we knew how to do it. Neither Califonia nor the rest of us have a clue how to make green energy happen at scale or to develop the infrastructure needed. Likening the one to the other is dishonest.

(08-13-2023 12:11 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]No matter what you believe about climate change/global warming/global cooling/whatever, it makes absolutely no sense to anyone but a bureaucrat to mandate changing from a basically reliable system to a non-existent one, in the hope that somehow a miracle will suddenly materialize.

The one thing that really annoys me is comparisons to JFK and the moon race. The idea is that somehow when JFK gave his, "Why does Rice play Texas?" speech at Rice Stadium in 1962, he gave birth to a space program that landed a man on the moon by 1969. In reality, that space program was already in existence long before then. The USA already had 7 astronauts, 3 of them had already flown in space, and with a very cautious and risk-avoidant plan to land on the moon by about 1975. What JFK really did was to resolve an internal space race between NASA and a Redstone Arsenal team led by Werner von Braun. NASA wanted to launch from earth and go straight to the moon. Von Braun wanted to build a space station and go to the moon from there. Here is a video from 1955 of von Braun explaining his approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz7njI0wEIw

Von Braun's approach would have gotten to the moon around 1975, but could not meet the 1969 deadline, so JFK basically committed the USA to the NASA approach. The end of the decade was an acclerated schedule, even for NASA, that required taking more risks, and Gus Grissom and others paid the price for those risks. A number of my family worked for von Braun at Redstone, and I remember that they were pretty pissed off about the JFK speech.

Green energy technology today is nowhere near as advanced as space travel technology was in 1962. We didn't have everything in place to go to the moon back then, but at least we knew how to do it. Neither Califonia nor the rest of us have a clue how to make green energy happen at scale or to develop the infrastructure needed. Likening the one to the other is dishonest.

Wait….

: