I lived in California for 30 years and the only time I remember any serious issues with power was back in 2000-2001 during the famous electricity crisis. But for some reason this idea endures that California has problems with their grid. Do they really? Because other than that one acute crisis I didn't have a problem with blackouts (that I can remember) for 20 freaking years. That's a pretty good record. It's a big state, so maybe the Bay Area has just fared better than other regions?

It's been getting worse lately. The average amount of time each PG&E customer was without power due to a sustained outage has increased from 1.9 hours/year in 2016 to 3.6 hours/year in 2021.

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/outages/planning-and-p...

PG&E started voluntarily turning off power to entire towns to avoid fire hazards... fire hazards that were self-made and exist only because of other failures that have piled up for the past few decades.

So the current situation is something along the lines of when the wind blows too much, they shut off the grid. When it blows too little, they shut off the grid. When it gets too hot, they shut off the grid.

It's crazy that this is happening in California of all places, but decades of poor policy decisions led to this and it'll take quite a bit of time to undo.

I used to live half a mile from a power plant in another state and I had far more outages there than I've had in California. That said, there are constant incentives to reduce peak energy usage, and there were a couple weeks this year where they almost did rolling blackouts. So, they still struggle with meeting demand sometimes.

Stanford had a big power outage recently (this summer) that took out student accommodation, server rooms, etc... due to wild fires.

That's nothing.

You want to learn what to do during winter power outages?

Join us down in Houston! Or anywhere in Texas for that matter.

Why?

California's energy policy needs a little work. Their environmental laws made creating power plants impossible in their state, so they almost exclusively purchase power from other states at sub-optimal rates for any new power demand.

Edit: phrasing and tone

In 2021, California produced about 200 TWh in-state and imported about 85 TWh, meaning they imported about 30% of total electricity. Not exactly "almost exclusively" imports.

Also, California regulations certainly permit building new power plants (and many new plants have been built in the past decade), just not new coal fired plants.

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

> just not new coal fired plants.

Or hydro-electric, or nuclear, or anything that would have meaningful impact on the state's situation.

More solar and wind are great, but they do not respond well to surges in demand, and there is no current way to store energy either.

So some impressive total production number might sound great, but the reality does not follow unfortunately. For a non-trivial portion of the state, electricity isn't a guarantee throughout the year anymore.

When I lived in LA it was frustrating explaining (to my out of state friends) how bad the power situation was. I cancelled many a DnD game because of it.

I eventually got so sick of it , that I left the state for good. I've never been happier.

If you chew through the numbers you just posted, you will find that imports from out of state are increasing year over year.

Hence, my statement "they almost exclusively purchase power from other states at sub-optimal rates for any new power demand"

PG&E, our regulated monopoly electrical utility, turns the power off during hot, windy days during the summer so that they can avoid liability for starting wildfires. They never maintained their equipment, so it fails and starts massive fires.

Fascinating