CA has had blackouts, not for lack of power, but recently, rather for liability reduction vs wildfires sparked by woefully behind the times maintenance of the grid.

We had capacity blackouts in 2020.

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/...

Small nitpick, they weren’t from lack of capacity it was reported as a planning problem.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-06/califor...

From the linked article,

A program known as convergence bidding, in particular, is meant to help keep electricity prices steady but instead “masked tight supply conditions” during the August heat wave, the analysis concluded.

and

Energy providers collectively under-scheduled the amount of electricity they expected to need.

This was definitely a lack of capacity.

Yeah, I was part of those. Sometimes living in CA feels third-world, and due to completely preventable maintenance items.

As a European, it always baffled me that power outages are such a common phenomenon in the US. I've heard stories about rolling blackouts due to heat/cold from people in all areas in the US. Whereas in Europe, I cannot remember a single instance rolling blackouts were used because of a gap in supply.

Sure, Europeans pay more for electricity, but maybe that spare capacity and inter-connectivity is worth it.

The only power outages I have had in Chicagoland have been due to trees and those get resolved in a few hours. I'm pretty sure TX and CA are the outliers.

In 8 years of living in Chicago... I've had the power go out for approximately 2 seconds.

In most of the US they aren’t common. Outside of that debacle in Texas, I can’t recall any rolling blackouts in the US from lack of supply. The rarity is quite likely why that event made international news and got so many people around the country talking about it

don't worry, the grid in EU isn't issue-free by any standard and solar and electric cars will do it no good at all.

I know it's not issue free. But Europeans tend to pay a premium to avoid its shortcomings rather than have blackouts. And I prefer that over having cheaper electricity but with a threat of blackouts.

The 48 states that aren't Texas and California just don't have these problems

I don't think most Europeans pay more for electricity than most Californians.

California's largest utility, PG&E, would top this list:

https://www.electricrate.com/data-center/electricity-prices-...

On any given day this month I've had an 87% chance of having uninterrupted power. 27 hours of total downtime, despite paying some of the highest rates.

Ah so such a dashboard would need to display expected vs actual.