PG&E Shutting off power.

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LeftieBiker said:
What about wheel blocks for extra security?
Unfortunately, I didn't have any. I'd looked into buying some but I recall seeing some not getting great reviews (e.g. ineffective, flattened/distorted by a car moving).

I expected to be without power until at least Friday but it came back probably around 3 pm on Thursday.

Inverter worked well for me. I did run into the Bolt's stupid 1 hour shutdown if left in park. Leaving it in neutral w/parking brake on worked. I set a timer on my phone and came back every hour to check, eventually every 2 hours, just in case. I mainly just had to listen for the pedestrian noisemaker which is constantly emitting noise while in neutral. :roll:
 
We have been having occasional 6+ hour outages here. I have put together a 200AH/20AH (I'll likely up it to 300AH) UPS to power some household circuits, but I'm also looking at using my Leaf just to power a circuit to run a battery charger for said UPS.
 
Reading news articles about the PGE power stopage it sounds like many people with grid-tied solar didn't expect the blackout to effect them. to be fair, everyone seems unprepared for the gravity of powering off so many million people.

This slightly dated article suggest that like hurricane Irma for PR and Harvey for Houston, this power stoppage this will spur a wave of home battery installs.
https://qz.com/1632555/californias-wildfires-may-benefit-home-batteries-and-solar-panels/

the same website had another even more dated article about 'defection day.' so called when so may people are grid-independent that it will be the new normal.
https://qz.com/1274865/californias-solar-mandate-the-first-of-its-kind-in-the-us-will-hasten-defection-day-from-the-grid/

I really like what SUNRUN is doing in Hawaii, California and new England with the software controlled virtual power plant VPP idea.
 
WetEV said:
Oilpan4 said:
They're more worried about the spotted owl.
Responsible forestry isn't letting it grow wild.

The useful idiot fake environmentalists have stopped forestry just outside of Albuquerque with in the last few weeks using the same bs they pull in California.

Wonder why there were forests before "Responsible forestry".

One big mistake we did in regards to forestry is that we put fires out. Fires are needed to keep the forest thinned and healthy. But we spent a century almost putting every fire out. So now you get conditions in regards to down, dead, dense and Beatle infestations that are far worse. We mismanaged fires for a century and now add in climate change and obviously a poor electric grid and you get conditions for fire storms.

One answer to why there were forests before we "managed" them is because nature burned them. So did the native Americans from some sources I've read. Sadly trying to let them burn now is difficult with the droughts, urban interface creeping into them, and fuel loads.
 
danrjones said:
WetEV said:
Oilpan4 said:
They're more worried about the spotted owl.
Responsible forestry isn't letting it grow wild.

The useful idiot fake environmentalists have stopped forestry just outside of Albuquerque with in the last few weeks using the same bs they pull in California.

Wonder why there were forests before "Responsible forestry".

One big mistake we did in regards to forestry is that we put fires out. Fires are needed to keep the forest thinned and healthy. But we spent a century almost putting every fire out. So now you get conditions in regards to down, dead, dense and Beatle infestations that are far worse. We mismanaged fires for a century and now add in climate change and obviously a poor electric grid and you get conditions for fire storms.

One answer to why there were forests before we "managed" them is because nature burned them. So did the native Americans from some sources I've read. Sadly trying to let them burn now is difficult with the droughts, urban interface creeping into them, and fuel loads.
I wonder if managed forestry and sustainable logging is not a better solution than fires.
 
SageBrush said:
danrjones said:
WetEV said:
Wonder why there were forests before "Responsible forestry".

One big mistake we did in regards to forestry is that we put fires out. Fires are needed to keep the forest thinned and healthy. But we spent a century almost putting every fire out. So now you get conditions in regards to down, dead, dense and Beatle infestations that are far worse. We mismanaged fires for a century and now add in climate change and obviously a poor electric grid and you get conditions for fire storms.

One answer to why there were forests before we "managed" them is because nature burned them. So did the native Americans from some sources I've read. Sadly trying to let them burn now is difficult with the droughts, urban interface creeping into them, and fuel loads.
I wonder if managed forestry and sustainable logging is not a better solution than fires.

That's a fair question and I do not know, but I would guess its location dependent. In arizona in the Rim country (SE of Flagstaff) they have thinned the forest and it came out pretty good. But the rim area is actually quite flat and accessible as mountains go. Parts of the Sierra are neither. You would end up logging by hand and helicopter. Probably not cost effective.

Fire though also has additional benefits such as returning nutrients to the ground, killing invasive species, etc. In fact some trees such as our giant sequoias require fire to release seeds from their cones.

Lightning fires were part of nature. Like most things in nature when man interferes you get some type of change.
 
SageBrush said:
I wonder if managed forestry and sustainable logging is not a better solution than fires.

Many of the areas burning are not economical to log. The two fires near LA, for example.

iu
 
cwerdna said:
LeftieBiker said:
What about wheel blocks for extra security?
Unfortunately, I didn't have any. I'd looked into buying some but I recall seeing some not getting great reviews (e.g. ineffective, flattened/distorted by a car moving). ...

Even a small sections of 2x4 will make passable wheel chocks to keep the vehicle from rolling. Place in front of front wheels, behind rear wheels. If you want to be ambitious, cut into wedges. That allows you to push "under" the tire a bit and any tire movement loads down the chock more to keep it from slipping. When I was flying, wheel chocks were never anything more than wedges of wood. You don't really need to overthink wheel chocks.
 
My father drag-raced Volvos, and he had cast aluminum wheel blocks that never deformed a millimeter. I suppose that like everything now made in China, those standards are out the window...
 
LeftieBiker said:
My father drag-raced Volvos, and he had cast aluminum wheel blocks that never deformed a millimeter. I suppose that like everything now made in China, those standards are out the window...
My wheel chocks are a pair of cheap-ass slippery plastic ones I purchased from JC Whitney, when I was ordering from them......35 years ago :shock: so even back then standards were out the window :lol:
God, when I think of all the cheap Chinese (or, was it Hong Kong or Taiwan?? back then) crap I purchased from Whitney......it was almost all junk and would break within weeks or months :( but I guess the wheel chocks held up......well I probably only use them a couple times/year(at most) but they really are cheap. More often than not I use a 4x4(prefer it over a 2x4 because it's higher and I figure harder for the tire to accidentally drive over) but I also use those cheap Whitney chocks too.
 
https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1183167024622645249 has an some examples of damage that PG&E shared supposedly during a recent press conference.
 
I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.
 
danrjones said:
I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.
 
Nubo said:
danrjones said:
I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Nubo said:
danrjones said:
I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...
.
Don't be so sure. It comes down to transformer costs. Only recently are solid state inverters changing the rules.
 
danrjones said:
Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.
.
If the previews are anything to go by it is Hollywood drama. Remember that 99%+ of America struggle with kW Vs kWh so an exploration of the facts is just out of the question.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Nubo said:
danrjones said:
I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

Plus just imagine the train set you could have had, no puny 12-18 vDC, you could have had a HO scale train running at hundreds of volts DC.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Nubo said:
danrjones said:
I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

The choice wasn't arbitrary.
 
danrjones said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
Nubo said:
As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

Plus just imagine the train set you could have had, no puny 12-18 vDC, you could have had a HO scale train running at hundreds of volts DC.


Most streetcar systems ran at around 500VDC. But AC won because it could cover a much larger area, so was far cheaper in terms of wire, and you could move the generating stations out of the city. As others have noted, technology has moved on.
 
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