Energy Strapped Calif. Gets Heat Warning

[phantom power]

The article also includes tidbits about St. Louis and New York power outages.

Authorities were investigating at least 29 possible heat-related deaths since the heat wave set in on July 16. Most were in the sizzling Central Valley, where temperatures have been in the triple digits and were forecast to top 100 for a few more days.

The intense heat pushed electricity use to 50,270 megawatts on Monday -- a record for California. Government agencies and businesses have helped the state avoid rolling blackouts so far, but energy officials expected another close with the rising temperature Tuesday.

(...)

The heat has taken a deadly toll in California, where Fresno County Coroner Loralee Cervantes reported 10 possible heat-related deaths in her area, including a man in his 40s found on a lawn Sunday with a body temperature higher than 109 degrees. Kern County Coroner John Van Rensselaer said a woman collapsed and died while walking a half-mile from her home to a drugstore in Ridgecrest, about 30 miles from Death Valley.

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8J31V00H.html

[ananda]

1. And a big thanks to..

.. Ken Lay..

.. Ahnuld..

.. and most especially to the stupid, celebrity-crazed voters of California
who voted for Reagan and other stupid actor idiots.

Sue

[soothsayer]

2. All that sunshine and all that coastline----why no major solar or

wave farms?

[kestrel91316]

3. We have major solar energy facilities out in the desert - not PV, but

solar heat-to-steam. And we have vast wind farms.

Wave energy harvesting is not yet commercially viable, IIRC. And with our sea floor dropping off so sharply from the coast, I am not sure if it would work. Isn't the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coast more conducive to wave energy use?

[jpak]

5. Wave power plants are being deployed commercially in Portugal

this year.

www.terradaily.com/reports/Portugal_Turns_To_Wind__Waves_And_Sun_To_Reduce_Oil_Dependence.html

http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2005/11/10/afx2328908.html

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=30275

And the West Coast has much higher wave power potential than all of the Gulf Coast and most of the southern East Coast.

Oregon has the greatest potential in the US...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9087031/

<snip>

"There is tremendous potential in the oceans to supply energy for the world," Annette von Jouanne, an Oregon State electrical engineering professor, told the crowd. "A 10-square-mile wave power plant could supply the entire state of Oregon."

<snip>

"I read something involved with this that said if 0.2 percent of the ocean's energy were harnessed, it could produce enough energy to power the entire world," added Cockrum, the utility district spokesman.

<more>

also...

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/osu-oml020105.php

surf's up!

:)

[NNadir]

6. Renewable energy makes up just over 30% of California's production,

but in the sunshine state, the direct solar doesn't really cut it.

Here is California's electrical sources for 1999-2003. Averaged over the entire period, we see that 28.3% of the summer energy capacity in California was from renewable energy.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/state_profile/rsp_ca_table1.html

Note that renewable capacity declined in that period. The reason for the decline is pretty evident when you look at the renewable sources.



According to this report, the contribution of solar energy among renewables was 0.3% of the energy produced in California, whereas hydroelectric represented 18.8% of the total electrical production capacity in California.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/state_profile/california.html

Note the huge presence of geothermal energy in California. This is an under-exploited resource with opportunity for expansion. (I have given some numbers for the Salton Sea area in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x37366) California produced almost 13,000 MW-hr of geothermal energy in 2003.

The corresponding figure for solar is 534 MW-hr. This means on a continuously averaged basis, the entire solar energy output in the state was 0.0610 MWe.

Despite several decades of posturing with all sorts of tax bills, subsidy proposals and so on, California still doesn't rely much on solar energy, which - given that it is the "Sunshine State," should be a telling indication as to whether solar energy will meaningfully contribute quickly in the crisis that now is becoming hourly more evident. Something is rotten in Denmark, or better put, something is clouding the Mohave.

Wind should continue to grow in California, and of course the geological formations of that state should allow for the storage of considerable amounts of off peak wind generation as pumped storage if the water can be found. I discussed a sort of far fetched idea of how that might work in the Salton Sea thread referenced above.

One thing is certain, California must find a way to get rid of that natural gas.

[orwell]

4. Fresno...

...one of the "hotbeds" of conservatism and global warming denial.

I guess Hell is coming early this year...