Email this morning:

As our communities continue to experience frigid weather, PJM, the regional grid operator that includes PECO, has asked for consumers across its 13 states and DC to look for ways to safely conserve electricity until 10 a.m. tomorrow.

If your health permits, please consider reducing the use of your electricity until 10 a.m. tomorrow. Conserving electricity as much as possible will help ensure adequate power supplies. Here are a few ways you can pitch in this holiday weekend:

Set your thermostat a few degrees lower, if its safe to do so
Postpone doing laundry or running dishwasher
Turn off lights and appliances when you don't need to use them
PJM continues to carefully monitor the power supply conditions. PJM is coordinating efforts among generators, power suppliers and local utilities to do everything possible to keep power flowing in the region.

As a country we need to increase our ability to generate electricity if we want to move from fossil fuel. So glad I have gas hot water and heat.

It must seem odd for a utility company to ask customers not to use so much of their product. What would we think if Apple ran an ad saying, "Your old iPhone is probably good enough for now."

Your conclusion isn't supported by the email you received. We use more electricity in times of extreme weather largely because the products we buy are not as efficient as they could be.

Providers WANT revenue of course, but they NEED to be able to supply product consistently. Personal sacrifice sucks, but if someone else does it, your lights may stay on longer. Thank them?

***

Our local co-op announced rolling blackouts that ended yesterday. There are a lot of houses that use electric resistance heating. We have it available on the main floor in every room, via built-in heaters that are older than me. Sometimes I wonder if there are more 220 circuits in the house than 110 ones.

But we never turn them on, and the other day the house was at 63 even though the set point was 72. That was our sacrifice of a few days. 63 is cold, but livable. And the lights stayed on.

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deckeda
It must seem odd for a utility company to ask customers not to use so much of their product. What would we think if Apple ran an ad saying, "Your old iPhone is probably good enough for now."

This has been happening for years. Drastically discounted fluorescent bulbs to replace incandescent bulbs.
Now reduced price LED's to replace fluorescents. 'Smart thermostats', subsidized insulation, etc have been happening for decades, all so that Utility companies don't have to invest and upgrade their own power plants.
This is a hole the utility companies dug themselves, IMO.

Dave

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Welcome to Dave's BBQ!

Many have eaten here....

Few have died

PJM isn’t a generator. They manage generation by others to provide power to 13 states and DC. They are really good at what they do. When the northeast and Canada had a major outage, PJM was the only reason that it didn’t cascade a cross the country.

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DinerDave
This is a hole the utility companies dug themselves, IMO.

Dave

Actually it is what those who pushed the whole deregulation bit during the '90s have bought us. The utilities no longer own the generating plants, operating and building more capacity is entirely up to other companies that sell to you through your utility. Those generating companies may be under some regulation, but not ones that guarantee a return. They only invest money in a new plant when it suits their production plans.

The utilities are consumers in this post-deregulation scenario we live in. They can call for more power to be provided, but ultimately it is up to the providers whether that power is available or not. Another result of deregulation has been few new interconnects being built between areas served by some utilities. That was something utilities could get approved under regulations as an alternative to building more capacity within their area of operation. There would be a guaranteed rate of return on the invested money.

Quote
DinerDave

Quote
deckeda
It must seem odd for a utility company to ask customers not to use so much of their product. What would we think if Apple ran an ad saying, "Your old iPhone is probably good enough for now."

This has been happening for years. Drastically discounted fluorescent bulbs to replace incandescent bulbs.
Now reduced price LED's to replace fluorescents. 'Smart thermostats', subsidized insulation, etc have been happening for decades, all so that Utility companies don't have to invest and upgrade their own power plants.
This is a hole the utility companies dug themselves, IMO.

Dave

Yes, they want to eventually put themselves out of business by producing nothing. It’s the obvious endgame, and done so that customers can keep asking for ever-higher monthly bills. Makes perfect sense.

....power to the people....???

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_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!

You could build enough capacity to fully cover the coldest three days in a decade, then keep the extra capacity in mothballs the other 9 years and 362 days. Or you could ask your customers to conserve for 24 hours once in a decade.

Even in the days of regulation, the same calculation applied.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/25/2022 11:28AM by Acer.

We’re having rolling blackouts, and had a lengthy power outage. Didn’t affect me, though - one of the few advantages of having been admitted to the local hospital with a surgical emergency. I found out about the outage/rolling blackouts via texts from Duke Energy.

Surgical emergency looks like it will be downgraded to elective surgery. Just as well - gastroenterologist input was required, but because of Christmas, not only were there non of them on duty, but none on call either: Another “wtf” moment in the travesty of what passes for medical care these days (to paraphrase my nurse).

What is this grid of which you speak?

Over the last couple weeks, my smart thermostat has shown it requires as much energy to maintain 55° as 68°. I was a little surprised at that. And the savings from the drop from 68 to 55 was negated by later bringing the temp from 55 back up to 68.

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back when enron was messing with california's power and they had to initiate rolling blackouts, they begged customers to use less power and it worked. Blackouts were scaled back after the public understood that if we used too much power, they would indeed shut it off. INCENTIVE!

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hal
back when enron was messing with california's power and they had to initiate rolling blackouts, they begged customers to use less power and it worked. Blackouts were scaled back after the public understood that if we used too much power, they would indeed shut it off. INCENTIVE!

Bad example.

Enron's rolling blackouts were used as leverage to manipulate their stock price, extort needless rate-hikes from worried politicians, and coerce companies into expensive long-term contracts.

Those blackouts didn't have anything to do with capacity.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/25/2022 12:57PM by Tiangou.

Quote
macphanatic
Email this morning:

As our communities continue to experience frigid weather, PJM, the regional grid operator that includes PECO, has asked for consumers across its 13 states and DC to look for ways to safely conserve electricity until 10 a.m. tomorrow.

If your health permits, please consider reducing the use of your electricity until 10 a.m. tomorrow. Conserving electricity as much as possible will help ensure adequate power supplies. Here are a few ways you can pitch in this holiday weekend:

Set your thermostat a few degrees lower, if its safe to do so
Postpone doing laundry or running dishwasher
Turn off lights and appliances when you don't need to use them
PJM continues to carefully monitor the power supply conditions. PJM is coordinating efforts among generators, power suppliers and local utilities to do everything possible to keep power flowing in the region.

As a country we need to increase our ability to generate electricity if we want to move from fossil fuel. So glad I have gas hot water and heat.

Fwiw, gas companies have also been asking people to cut back. It's a hundred year weather event, so extraordinary circumstances.

Quote
deckeda
It must seem odd for a utility company to ask customers not to use so much of their product. What would we think if Apple ran an ad saying, "Your old iPhone is probably good enough for now."
...

Indeed. My understanding is this:

When electricity is in high demand, the utility company needs to purchase more energy on the wholesale market at very high prices and they cannot pass this price to consumers, so they are at a loss. Or if they also own some power generation plants, they need to bring online older generators which are not always efficient. They really want to avoid this.

I don't know what our setup is here in Idaho, but it's different from some places in that Idaho Power has to ask for rate increases through the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. I think it has at least something to do with Idaho Power advocating conservation and moving away from reliance on coal derived power.