Re: California hits stage 3 power emergency

[lucifer () lightbearer com]

Sean Donelan wrote:
> On Thu, 11 January 2001, Dalvenjah FoxFire wrote:
> > I haven't seen Sean post about this yet, so figured I would.
>
> About 4am this morning I thought about posting something, but
> thought the power companies would mysteriously find some extra
> power at the last minute again.

The rest of us were hoping, too...

> > California's been getting hit with a nasty storm since yesterday that's
> > taken out some more major power plants; the CAISO declared a Stage 3
> > (rolling blackouts all around) power emergency just before 9 AM PST today.
> >
> > See http://www.caiso.com/SystemStatus.html for pretty graphs.
>
> No rolling blackouts are currently planned, but 15,000 Megawatts
> is currently off-line (1/3 of normal capacity).  If there are rolling
> blackouts, most likely would occur between 4pm and 8pm.  CAL-ISO
> declared a "Stage 3" emgergency, but called for a reduction of 0MW
> (that's a zero) of interruptiable load.  So I'm guessing the purpose
> of declaring the stage 3 was to activate some other programs, such as
> shutting down the water pumps between northern and southern california
> again.  Something which apparently is only done during a State 3 emergency.

They've just announced the first set of rolling blackouts (assuming nothing
gets fixed in the immediate future), starting at 1600 PST (local time),
covering the Redwood city area. At least, in theory.

> Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is operating at 20% capacity due
> to high surf conditions. (http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/DAILY/psr.htm)

Reportedly problems with kelp in the intakes. Never a fun situation...
-- 
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Joel Baker                           System Administrator - lightbearer.com
lucifer () lightbearer com              http://www.lightbearer.com/~lucifer