By Sherry Listgarten
E-mail Sherry Listgarten
View all posts from Sherry Listgarten
Comments
We have a UPS and the problem with overnight outages is that it starts beeping in the middle of the night, waking everyone off, and has to be dealt with in the dark to stop making the bleeping noise. Great to come home and know the power is off, not when awoken at 2 am.
Our internet goes when the power goes also, so trying to look online for what is happening with a weak phone signal is not fun.
I am told that PG&E will send text alerts about how long power is out, Palo Alto Utilities does not do that.
The media says that power outages means we are in the dark. I can deal with the dark, I can deal with losing heat, but I can’t deal with losing food that is partly cooked in the oven and is ruined when the power goes half way through the baking process, even a short power outage ruins an oven baking bread! Can’t imagine what it would do to a business that bakes.
When people work from home and the power goes out, quite a lot just decide to transfer to their offices where there is power. I often see an exodus of cars in my neighborhood as soon as the power goes out.
Can’t imagine what happens in schools. Has the power gone out in our local schools? That would be quite a hindrance as so many classrooms have no windows for natural light. Wow, teachers having to teach without electronics, that might be something interesting for the kids to learn!
I agree that short outages aren’t a big deal. If you make them a big deal, you’re a whiner. You never learned to take things in stride, and it will hinder you for life. We don’t live in a perfect world. Life goes on.
We had a long outage last Sunday and it still wasn’t a big deal. Sure, we through a few things out. But it beats mud slides and losing our home or our life which I’m seeing on the news recently.
I’ve lived in PA for a long time, in 3 different locations. If my memory serves, power outages were minimal until the 2000s, when they seemed more frequent. Working at home, I bought several UPS units. When they kicked in they beeped, like Bystander said, and that was annoying. Power seems more reliable in the last 10+ years, and I’ve recycled by UPS units.
When the power goes out it can take awhile to make some smart home things work. Most work fine, some need to be reset. Speaking of smart home capabilities, you may want to consider updating your irrigation controller (Santa Clara County will pay for it in many cities) and your light switch timer. The latter can easily be set to turn on or off at sunrise/sunset, which varies by hours over the course of the year.
As someone who has had the misfortune of suffering through more than one multi day power outage in the past few years, I am deeply resentful of those who are forcing electrical appliances over gas and banning generators. Such mandates are deeply misguided and harmful.
@Joseph, I agree that multi-day outages are problematic. Are you in a PSPS area? Did you buy a generator? If not, what part of electrification are you most concerned about wrt outages? (Isn’t your heat already going out?) I’d love to understand this better.
BTW, my understanding re generators is they are still allowing propane and diesel, just not gas. I don’t know much about it though. I do know there are home battery incentives for people in PSPS areas, even free ones.
Yes, I am in a PSPS area. I did buy a generator, but my understanding is that they are now or will be illegal to buy going forward in California. I don’t qualify for PG&E’s battery incentives.
I used to have a gas water heater that would work during a power outage. California made those water heaters illegal to fight air pollution, so no longer.
The furnace does indeed not work during a power outage. However I was provided with some comfort from my gas stove which continued to function if lit by a match.
My primary concerns with forced electrification are the following:
– I don’t believe it’s appropriate for city council members or state legislatures to dictate what power source I will use for appliances in my home. It’s an unjustified infringement on personal freedoms.
– The electrical grid is barely hanging on as it is. I have no confidence that any realistic plans are in place to handle massive increases in utilization.
– I’m not convinced that using natural gas to heat water or for cooking is a significant environmental threat compared to electrical generation and transmission to generate the same heat. I suspect that a lot of expensive changeovers are being done with next to no impact on the climate. Wasting resources like that is bad for society.
@Joseph, thanks for the reply, and I hear your frustration. FWIW, I really hope that our utilities get moving with wildfire hardening so the PSPS shutoffs are much less frequent and less widespread by 2028 and 2030 (see footnote below). That has to happen imo.
But your point as you say isn’t so much related to that. Rather, it’s that you want the freedom to choose what fuel powers your appliances (and cars?). You don’t think we’ll have enough power to electrify. And you don’t think electrification helps, since we use gas to produce electricity. So you don’t want to transition and, even if you did, you think CA is being reckless by transitioning aggressively.
Presumably instead you believe we should focus on adapting to large levels of sea level rise, heat waves, etc, and helping other people (and animals?) do the same (?)
I’ve written about electricity supply and heating emissions before, so I won’t redo that here. There is no doubt that it is difficult to develop and bring online such large amounts of clean energy at the times when we need it. But imo CA must do this transition, and we are doing a really remarkable job so far, though it is not and won’t be without hiccups. For us to go on polluting the world the way we have been doing, when other paths are available, and to justify this by claiming that our “freedom of appliance” is paramount, is not something I support.
Again, appreciate your weighing in, and as you say it is really important that we continue to push on our electricity — supply, emissions, prices, and wildfire hardening.
Footnote: Just to clarify, 2028 is when gas-powered generators can no longer be sold in CA. They are still for sale in CA today, and propane and diesel generators will be available for sale after 2028. 2030 is when CARB (and just now our own Bay Area Air Quality Management District) proposes that gas-powered water heaters and furnaces can no longer be sold. That is, I think, a much bigger deal. These one-for-one replacements are not uniformly easy. Hopefully that will improve by 2030. Palo Alto’s concierge HPWH initiative is really important to get a sense of this.
“For us to go on polluting the world the way we have been doing, when other paths are available, and to justify this by claiming that our “freedom of appliance” is paramount, is not something I support.”
Other paths are available? What are they? No more diesel and jet fuel for all of the aircraft, farm equipment, locomotives, trucks, and ships currently in service? Energy is required to keep the nation/economy running and renewables can’t provide it. This is not just about appliances. Cut off current energy sources and you get higher prices/supply disruptions/product shortages that affect everyone.
Want to generate resentment/discredit the environmental movement? Tell people in a free society (we still have one) that it’s “tough luck” or “deal with it” that you can’t afford to: heat your home, retrofit it, replace your car, buy groceries, drive to work, deliver your products, provide services to your customers,hire employees,retire,etc. – because we (who are not affected by it) know what is best and are “saving the planet”.
Alternative energy sources and transitions need to have a market based, gradual approach. Not a government mandated (rationing) one.
It is interesting to read the comments above. That said, none of them contextualizes the fact that the changes to our Earth’s climate are global. That somehow if California “accomplishes its goals,” that magically the world will avoid some pending calamity with respect to rising global temperatures.
So long as the world determines that China and India be designated as “emerging” countries, and thus allow them to build their energy infrastructure utilizing coal and oil ( today China has more than 1,500 coal-fired generating plants under construction), it seems to me that it matters little what California does.
California has done precious little in terms of projects that meet its burgeoning population. Recently, our governor requested that the PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant curtail its process of permanently shutting down in light of our state’s lack of enough available electricity to provide for the 40 million people who now live here. I might point out that Diablo Canyon produces about 10% of the state’s electricity. Unfortunately, as I understand it, that process is irreversible.
And it’s the same story with our water. CA has not build a major water storage facility since the 1980’s (when there were only 20 million residents). Furthermore, there is something fundamentally wrong with the state’s allocation of its water, with 50% going to the fish, 40% to agriculture, and only 10% to its citizens. And yet when we have a shortage of supply, the 10% gets to take a disproportionate share of the cutbacks.
So we continue to buy electric cars, get rid of gas-fired furnaces, and water heaters in the face of an electric infrastructure that can’t even meet today’s demands without the added requirements that will be needed to fill the energy gaps the losses of these units will require.
There is a cognitive dissonance in California that defies all logic, and if it is allowed to continue, California really has no future. Last year, 400,000 people left the state.
The discussion does continue here, but as yet the mild inconvenience of power outages and the need to perhaps throw food away seems to be what people consider as acceptable.
When power goes out, it isn’t only homes that lose power.
Traffic lights go out and traffic circulation is impacted.
If schools lose power, what happens? Does the school send kids home? If parents can’t get to school or home, are the kids just left alone?
If daycare centers lose power, do they have to close?
If dentists and other medical buildings lose power, what happens to someone halfway through a root canal?
This is the 21st century. Electric power is necessary for everyday life and the mild inconvenience may be mild unless you are in a situation where it is not.
Sherry, you write:
“Presumably instead you believe we should focus on adapting to large levels of sea level rise, heat waves, etc, and helping other people (and animals?) do the same (?)”
That is not the case. You may be surprised to hear it, but I do share a level of concern about the climate and rising temperatures. However, I want to see our society and in fact the globe take actions that I believe will work. What California is doing now is taking expensive steps that I believe are ineffectual, and in fact counter productive because they waste resources and make people like me who are not climate ideologues resentful.
I believe the only way that the fossil fuel / greenhouse gas problem can be solved is by coming up with a better, cheaper alternative that people will voluntarily want to use. Nuclear power, perhaps with new smaller and safer reactor designs seems promising. The goal would be to make electricity so cheap that I will want to replace my gas appliances to save money. PG&E and California are very far from that now, obviously.
No matter how many expenses and inconveniences California inflicts on its citizens in service of forced electrification, it will not change what other countries do, especially poorer ones. Only a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels can do that.
All, thanks for the thoughtful comments.
@MichaelB, on your last point, you may be interested in this event at Hoover in two weeks: “Markets vs Mandates”. It’s an all-day thing on Monday, and I know you are in the East Bay, so it may well not be feasible for you to go. If I can make it, I’ll do a writeup on it.
@Bystander, if you really want to worry about the potential dangers posed by outages (and I know you do), take a look at this. Not sure why I’m feeding the monster, though…
@Joseph and @Michael, I agree 100% that super cheap alternatives that entice people to voluntarily switch would be ideal. You can see some of that now with EVs. Change can happen very quickly in those circumstances.
But in cases where we aren’t there, what do we do, since climate change is not slowing down in the meantime? We’ve spent decades delaying the transition, and we are seeing some of the consequences of that. Do we delay for decades more? Where do we draw the line at “good enough for now” and, if we are drawing it pretty high, then how do we hedge our bets?
My 2c: I have a hard time believing that cheap nuclear, fusion, carbon removal, and carbon-free gas/H2 to the home are going to happen at scale at low cost any time soon. Look at NuScale. These things take decades, if they happen at all. EVs took decades, even with LCFS mandates, and those are much simpler. So I prefer to go forward with the “good enough” solutions we have today, many of which are already popular across the world and parts of the US (e.g. heat pumps), and keep improving.
Of course it’s reasonable to have a debate on how aggressive the transition to clean energy can be. These discussions happen all the time at the CEC, CARB, CPUC, etc. Mandates have to take cost and complexity into consideration, policies won’t work if they are hugely unpopular, etc. There is plenty of room for discussion.
I guess what I wish is that people who were advocating to wait to transition until significant future technical inventions happen would be more eager to talk about their plans for adapting to a quickly warming climate, paying for that, and helping others do the same.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
@Bystander, I am dumbfounded as to why people don’t know what to do at an intersection when the power goes out. It’s supposed to be treated like a stop sign. It’s crazy as four cars are sitting n,s,e,w, looking at each other, with no idea who’s supposed to go next.
As for what to do about repeat power outages, [portion removed], these recent power outages have a huge effect on people who use home electronic medical devices to stay alive. [portion removed]
Is anyone keeping count of how many times the power has gone out since January 2022?
The difference between utility and luxury is being felt here in this upscale neighborhood. There are those with luxury who can afford a generator, and there are those who depend on the only utility company in town to provide electricity. [portion removed]
Ed note: Portions were removed because they were ad hominem. See commenting guidelines above.
I happen to think that having an alternative point of view and asking unpopular questions does not make me deserve to being called a monster. Sorry, but calling names is not helpful. However, I appreciated the link.
@Bystander, I agree with that in general. In this case, FWIW, “feed the monster” (or maybe more commonly “feed the beast”) is an idiom, not a personal attack.
[Portion omitted] As for how I dealt with Palo Alto’s inability to provide 24/7 service and not letting the consumer have any other choice, AND no City emergency plan, I left. More people are leaving. For good. And the agency that is tasked with identifying flood prone areas says it will take a YEAR to study Palo Alto’s vulnerability in the face of climate change. The new normal here is more third world than upper crust. Take a few zeroes off of the housing prices in the next year. We will finally have affordable housing. The good news is it’s very easy to bury the power lines in mud. I think the city should expedite their plans if they’re ever going to do it.
Nice article. We recently had 2 power outages (40 hours and 16 hours). Fortunately we have a 20KW generator to supply electricity during the downtime.
I saw this article: “California’s Green Debacle”. Thought you’d be interested in it since you’ve been one of chief champions of the energy policies currently making life miserable for the citizens of our state.
Remember all those Diana Diamond blogs about the non-answers the city’s given on how THEY’ll cope with the increased demand for electricity? She’s been asking those questions for a year and getting no answers from CPAU or the City Manager’s “Communications” officers, chiefs and worker bees.
Maybe instead of asking us how we like sitting in the dark watching our food thaw, you could try toi get answers from the
You might also check the Our Town Palo Alto group on Facebook for people’s reactions to the new rate hikes.
The problem with saying that one will make the transition away from carbon-based fuel when the alternatives are cheaper is that current market pricing does not take into account the externalities that using carbon-based fuel is causing. In the ideal world, all of the negative impacts of carbon-based fuels (e.g., higher gas tax) should be priced into the cost of fuel. In the absence of correct pricing mechanism, incentives and mandates are necessary.
To answer Sherry’s question: we live in Los Altos, and most likely had some outages; I remember that the transformer on the pole across the street blew up a while back. But those are complete non events for us. We are preparing to electrify our two gas uses (heat and hot water) when the appliances die on us. We did install solar panels last year, and we chose not to install batteries.
What is more intriguing for me is this: as we get rid of generation from fossil fuels, and hydro produces less (as it has done in the past 6-7 years or so), we will have to deal with the fact that the remaining sources are less flexible. One approach is to accept, the week of the year when both sun and wind are not cooperating, that we produce less steel and cement, and delay Amazon deliveries. I.e. build the infrastructure for the 98% case rather than the 110% case (and use the savings for other projects). Sounds like a good deal to me; who wants to join me?
Follow this blogger.
Sign up to be notified of new posts by this blogger.
Email:
Post a comment
In order to encourage respectful and thoughtful discussion, commenting on stories is available to those who are registered users. If you are already a registered user and the commenting form is not below, you need to log in. If you are not registered, you can do so here.
Please make sure your comments are truthful, on-topic and do not disrespect another poster. Don’t be snarky or belittling. All postings are subject to our TERMS OF USE, and may be deleted if deemed inappropriate by our staff.
See our announcement about requiring registration for commenting.
Get the day’s top headlines from Palo Alto Online sent to your inbox in the Express newsletter.
José Andrés to open new restaurant in Palo Alto
By The Peninsula Foodist | 1 comment | 7,783 views
Can there be too many activists?
By Sherry Listgarten | 19 comments | 2,556 views
Will auto license plate readers really curtail crime? Or will our privacy be endangered?
By Diana Diamond | 33 comments | 2,254 views
“Love like a Man” Men: Read this book! (Women, too.)
By Chandrama Anderson | 1 comment | 2,029 views
Political Wedge Issues – Farm Bill (part 7)
By Laura Stec | 0 comments | 865 views
Submit your story today
The 37th Annual Palo Alto Weekly Short Story Contest is now accepting entries for Adult, Young Adult and Teen categories. Submit your short story here by May 10 (online submissions only). Stories must be 2,500 words or less. First, Second and Third Place prizes awarded in each category. Sponsored by Kepler’s Books, Linden Tree Books and Bell’s Books.
Home
News
TownSquare
Blogs
A&E
Community Calendar
Sports
Home & Real Estate
Visitor Info
Send News Tips
Become a Member
Print Edition/Archives
Express / Weekend Express
Promotions
Special Pubs
Obituaries
Circulation & Delivery
About Us
Contact Us
Advertising Info
Place a Legal Notice
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Mountain View Voice
The Almanac
TheSixFifty.com
Redwood City Pulse
© 2023 Palo Alto Online
All rights reserved.
Embarcadero Media
PR MediaRelease
Spotlight
Mobile site