We're all wondering how California could have painted itself into such a lurid corner on a lot of subjects, the most recently obvious one being a dramatic failure of the power grid.
USA Today helpfully quotes two citizens--one famous and one not--who are floating explanations that surely will catch on. First,
For San Francisco resident and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer, the blame lies at the doorstep of the White House. He says, "We can't solve this within the Golden State. We are in a fight for our lives, and the president isn't doing anything to help us. In fact, he's making things worse."
Mr. Steyer offers no explanation for his theory, which perhaps needs none. Second,
Susan Smith, [a] resident of Shasta County, where 40,000 PG+E customers had their power turned off, has lived through tornadoes and hurricanes but has never dealt with as many outages as she has since moving from Texas [clue alert].... "If PG+E doesn't have faith in themselves that they can't withstand a wind storm, then they need to go out of business," Smith says Sunday while charging her phone at a community resource center set up in her hometown of Anderson.
Well, PG+E is in its second bankruptcy of the last two decades, so we'll see, but the special thing about state-regulated monopolies is that they generally don't go out of business no matter how fantastically they fail. It's kind of why people go for the monopoly gig in the first place. In any case, while PG+E can expect limited sympathy considering whom it's in bed with, it is now and ever has been the truth that when a heavily state-regulated monopoly does a bad job, it might be a good idea to consider the barking-mad regulatory system it lives under. It's freaking California, after all, and when you untether a company from market forces by granting it monopoly status, all you have left for protection is the gummint. That's the state gummint, by the way, the one answerable to California voters, not the Bad Orange Man in Washington.
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For San Francisco resident and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer, the blame lies at the doorstep of the White House.
EIA: California ISO imports 26% of its electricity from other states
New data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows Californians are using significantly more power than they generate, importing more than a quarter of daily use, on average.
The state imports a net daily average of 201 billion kWh from other western regions, or about 26% of its average daily demand.
Seems to me a state that is concerned about energy supply and already imports over a quarter of its electricity should take moves to become more self-sufficient in electricity generation, instead of whining about needing help from other states,.
Some of this didn't make the comment
For San Francisco resident and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer, the blame lies at the doorstep of the White House. He says, "We can't solve this within the Golden State. We are in a fight for our lives, and the president isn't doing anything to help us. In fact, he's making things worse."
Ds cali pg e, alliance.
Ds alliance vs dark fleet. Weapons test prevented in cali.
Outages due to 4th gen warfare between ds factions, light vs dark, patriots vs x.
If I recall correctly, part of this whole mess was ginned up back when Gray Davis (D) was governor, and 'deregulated' the electric power market. He in fact forced utilities to buy all their power on the spot market instead of entering into long-term contracts, driving up prices and helping to force generation outside of CA.
all you have left for protection is the gummint.
And at the end of the story, the Gummint will still be standing, over the freshly-hanged bodies of the monopoly executives.
Perhaps I exaggerate. Slightly.
I would like to ask leftists to explain why the nation, in the 21st century, still needs cities and states with different laws, rules, and regulations. Under leftist axioms, isn't the whole notion of "federalism" kind of obsolete? Why should Illinois and Indiana be allowed different gun laws? Why should Delaware privilege corporations over Virginia? How come "sanctuary cities" are necessary? One land, for all folk, under one law... yes?
I tend to expect a leftist to fail to comprehend the question let alone make a defense.
Tom Steyer lives in a very small bubble of his own making where the blame for everything is Trump, and the solution to everything is getting rid of Trump and everyone else agrees with him. He's actively running TV ads saying that support for impeachment is at an all time high. He previously (long before he was running for office) had run ads claiming that we needed to impeach the President because... well, he never actually gave any accusations of high crimes or misdemeanors, he just said impeachment was necessary.
I understand that when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like nails, but this guy is a loon.
More hijack human filth shenanigans https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/giant-of-dc-music-scene-charged-with-soliciting-prostitution/2019/08/22/0dc0b00c-c506-11e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html%3FoutputType%3Damp&ved=2ahUKEwjviKjsm7_lAhXBxlkKHaL0AeUQFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0C-E_IRJiE0Szdi3jFTpAT&cf=1
Christopher B, that is exactly correct. For reasons I will never understand, the PUC turned down PG&E's increasingly frantic requests to be allowed to buy long-term hedges against volatile power prices. The PUC claimed it was worried prices would go DOWN, and ratepayers would be left holding the bag. PG&E ended up almost entirely in the spot market, which predictably went berserk as California squeezed its huge power imports into tighter and tighter bottlenecks at the border. Gosh, who would have guessed that a bottleneck plus a frantic second-by-second need to keep a power grid in balance plus a spot market would blow up in anyone's face?
I sat in on untold hours of PG&E bankruptcy hearings. The whole case was an education. It's remarkable to see PG&E engaged in blackouts again so soon, this time for a completely different set of reasons, but still mired in bad public policy. And yet I get the impression that 99% of California residents would unhesitatingly chalk the whole thing up to "greed" and trust the government to fix it, because the government has no profit motive.
Seems like a good opportunity for California to show us how we can get all the power we'll ever need from renewables. Lead the way into our bright and glorious sustainable future, Californians.
Texan, if I recall correctly (and I might not), it had something to do with Enron and the decreasing energy prices in the late 1990s. I recall when PG&E and a few others were blocked from new long-term contracts, but I was in Enron territory at the time, and that was the focus - natural gas prices and coal. California's power wasn't a local concern.
LittleRed1
Enron was deeply involved in the spot market prices and was accused of manipulating them, though I don't recall the details. Certainly the spot market was dysfunctional for a while, in part because the brilliant California regulators and legislators implemented an artificial mandatory pseudo-market, called an "exchange"--they love those, because they sound all marketey--whose workings were so opaque that when the PG&E bankruptcy finished up years later, there still was no one who really understood how the claims arising out of the failed market-clearing mechanism should be calculated. I've been in rooms with counsel for all the energy companies with a combined billing rate of $100,000/hour, but literally no one could make a beginning or an end of it. It was a black box.
It was blindingly clear to PG&E what a disaster lay in store for them if they couldn't get the PUC to get over its terror of long-term hedge contracts. PG&E laid out again and again what would happen, while the regulators stalled, and finally it happened. Enron may have been the catalyst, but it was going to happen. California was using lots more power than it would allow to be produced locally, and almost all of it had to come in on a very few high-volume transmission lines.
No consequences.
The people making decisions have no skin in the game. Are the Hollywood Hills dark? Are the espresso machines in Malibu down?
Baldilocks, of Milblogger fame, says she thinks the whole thing is a scam to drive out everyone in California who isn't either a super-rich elitist or (preferably an illegal) first-generation immigrant who can serve as their servant class.
If they really want Trump to fix the problem, they can revert back to territorial status and Trump can appoint someone to run it.
Don't see that happening.
Frank
"Baldilocks, of Milblogger fame, says she thinks the whole thing is a scam to drive out everyone in California who isn't either a super-rich elitist or (preferably an illegal) first-generation immigrant who can serve as their servant class. "
There is merit to this idea- I have wondered for a long time if the draconian gun control laws in some states are merely a tool to enact the "Curley Effect".
There have been societies of a small elite with lots of servants, but they haven't been as comfortable as you'd think. It turns out you actually need a middle-class to make stuff.
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