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The article under discussion is titled "California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001". For that to be true, the author appears to be distinguishing between (a) outages due to load shedding due to insufficient generation capacity and (b) outages due to deliberate shutdowns of inadequately-maintained transmission lines in weather with high fire risk. The 2019 outages--which in an earlier comment I called "approaching third-world duration and frequency"--were (b). That distinction is a little subtle, since they're both deliberate cuts. But I chose to follow the author, and I believe the "rolling" reasonably conveys "just (a)", since outages due to (b) don't actually "roll" (despite your CNBC article using that phrase). The power there stays off permanently until the fire danger passes and the line is re-inspected. This is actually worse, since customers don't get brief opportunities to re-cool their freezers and such, but it's different. I don't see why you think the duration of the outages is irrelevant. For better or for worse, the USA accepts occasional outages of a few hours as "normal". People are inconvenienced, but not hugely--your freezer doesn't melt, water tanks in (older, at least) tall buildings don't empty, cell sites and other infrastructure with backup power doesn't run out of battery or diesel, and so on. I thought the Berlin blackout was particularly significant because its long duration meant those stopgaps were exhausted; but perhaps the two countries' overall attitude to power outages is sufficiently different that I'm missing something. I mentioned country-level population density because I was comparing country-level SAIDI numbers. American cities still do worse than Germany, but by less. For example, my Singapore report above put the SAIDI for NYC at 20.53 minutes, around Germany's overall average. In any case, I've lived many places in the USA and other countries, and California's grid is uniquely terrible. The rest of the USA's grid seems fine to me though, just one that makes different tradeoffs from Germany's. If I understand correctly, Germany's electricity prices are roughly double[1] those of the USA. So it seems like Germany just chose a higher-quality, more expensive approach, and USA chose quick and dirty, all very much in line with national stereotypes. 1. https://energytransition.org/2015/05/german-power-bills-low-... |