Category: Power (Electricity, Gas)

  • Natural Gas Gets a Reprieve?

    This is an interesting month in the climate wars with Bill Gates issuing a statement that basically said “nevermind” after years of haranguing us, eight miles of rainforest cut down for a climate conference in Brazil and some of our local governments trying to keep their all-electric “reach codes” on life support. Per the DJ:

    After some legal hiccups, cities throughout the region, including San Mateo, are revisiting policies that incentivize use of electric appliances and penalize reliance on gas infrastructure in homes and buildings.

    That “legal hiccup” was the Ninth Circuit eviscerating Berkeley’s overreach on natural gas. Our neighboring city to the south is reacting with a revision that

    Would require single-family homes, duplexes, townhomes and commercial buildings to install either a heat pump or higher-efficiency air conditioner at the time the original AC unit needs replacement.  The potential reach code would also require the addition of electric infrastructure when certain types of renovations are already underway.

    Then San Mateo broached a “scoring” system to award points to homeowners for choosing various electric-only options. You would not be wrong to compare that to the CCP’s Social Credit system. At least one councilor has a glimmer of understanding about complexity (i.e. staff time) and costs although it apparently didn’t deter her from plunging ahead.

    This is already going to be really complicated to understand, but it’s also an opportunity to really bring our community along because with a number of the other reach codes, there have been real cost issues associated with them, where people thinking the cost was going to be X, and the cost ends up being X plus 50%,” Councilmember Lisa Diaz Nash said.

    Here are a few of the costs that get us to X + 50% —or way more–2X, 3X?. Things have gotten even more expensive than when I wrote that five years ago. Some day I would love to see the DJ or the Daily Post survey council members up and down the Peninsula (and County supes) to see if any of them are all-electric. Aside from new construction, I’ll be it’s very very few.

  • ECR: T-minus Two Months and Counting

    Caltrans stopped by the city council meeting on Monday to tell everyone that the Little Big Dig project to improve El Camino Real is on track to start at the end of December or early January. You would not be wrong to ask, “If you are within two months of starting a $130 million dollar project that will disrupt a whole city for at least four years, shouldn’t you have a firm start date?” The plan, described here, is to start at the south end, working up the northbound side, then turning around at Millbrae and working down the southbound side. PG&E in the meantime will be starting on the north end and working its way down the southbound side burying the power lines and whatever else is hanging off the poles. That will take an indeterminate but long time. We got a tiny taste of it here.

    Stage 1 (about 2,000 feet long) will remove the first 136 trees which are marked by a medallion. Tree removal needs a “full closure” of that section of the state highway which opens up a set of questions that mostly went unasked by council or were answered superficially by staff and Caltrans. How police, fire, and ambulances get rerouted is the top concern. The response is essentially “we will be in contact with them”–check out slide 13–and you will see I will be on the leading (bleeding?) edge of these questions. How Recology picks up the garbage and recycling and how delivery services get to residences and businesses is another. SamTrans will also have to squeeze through. We should probably institute a no-left-turn zone for each stage and ensure BPD has a good overtime budget for the next four years.

    I’m still hoping the city or Caltrans will alert people to the doomed trees with some marker or ribbon larger than the little metal tags that are attached now. It’s gonna be a shock beyond just the street closures. The official response is “we are planting twice as many trees as we are taking out”. They’re just 10% as tall.

    Stages 2 through 6 are queued up much the same way, taking us through the Fall of 2029. That’s not a typo. Neither is this caveat in the slide deck “Timeline subject to change, contingent on PG&E undergrounding coordination and other key challenges“. That is going to put quite a magnifying glass on the general contractor, Teichert Construction, who councilwoman Donna Colson noted is a woman-owned company led by a someone she grew up with in Sacramento. As Bill Murray said in Caddyshack about his relationship with the Dalai Lama, “So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.” At least we know who to call and Donna noted she expects 100’s of calls. What is the biggest voicemail box you can buy? Public works director Syed Murtuza chose his retirement date wisely as the ribbon-cutting will also be his farewell.

    Council talked about public notice, banners, traffic advisory email lists, project website, social media posts on X, Facebook et al, and snail mailed notices. Prepare for incoming. In the meantime, see if your favorite Eucalyptus has one of these.

  • Power Pole Preview

    PG&E needed to replace a pole (one!) in my neighborhood recently. Watching it all happen got me thinking about the El Camino Real project (aka the Little Big Dig coming next year). We all got multiple notices about the new pole by mail and phone indicating a 30-minute planned outage on the morning of the work and another outage near the end of the day. A crew of about 15 guys rolled in with at least eight vehicles and two trailer-mounted generators. After they de-energized a section around the pole and disconnected it, the two generators kicked on to keep the lights on for the neighborhood.

    The job took the whole day with all 15 or so guys here all day. A long rig delivered the new pole and the guy in the bucket truck started disassembling the power, phone, and cable wires. All I could think of was what a massive task it will be to move miles of the El Camino wiring underground–and how many longer outages will occur. As with the loss of 90% of the eucalyptus trees, I doubt many people have any idea what is coming. It also made me glad to have a gas stove, heat and outdoor grill. Having dual power sources has been smart forever and not likely to change anytime soon.

  • A Cautionary Tale: Caltrans and Guerneville

    The SF Comicle has brought us a cautionary tale about the Caltrans project to upgrade Guerneville's main drag which is also a state highway.  The four block long project has echoes to the B'game Ave. streetscape project done years ago, but I'm hearing warnings about our forthcoming El Camino Real project that I've taken to calling the "Little Big Dig".  Here are a couple of snippets from the Comicle piece starting with the blunt advice from a local business owner that concludes the article:

    “If I had advice for the next community — get a lawyer,” gallery owner Douglas DeVivo said.

    Caltrans spokesperson Jeffrey Weiss said the project to upgrade Guerneville’s sidewalks to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act was originally slated to begin last summer. Caltrans delayed the project start “to minimize construction impacts on merchants during the town’s busy summer season,” he said in an email. The agency said that “additional delays occurred when the contractor encountered unrecorded, abandoned underground utilities, railroad ties, and large redwood tree stumps and root systems,” and that “you never know what you’ll find in an old community when you start digging.”

    Truer words were never spoken.  You never know what you'll find once the backhoe arrives.  And they weren't cutting down hundreds of huge trees and undergrounding three or four types of overhead wires.

    Like many small towns across California, a state highway also serves as Main Street in Guerneville.  That has left Guerneville residents few avenues to weigh in on how revamping their town — from business disruptions to aesthetics — might unfold.

    The project included widening sidewalks, installing 23 curb ramps to accommodate wheelchairs, adding traffic signals and sidewalk bulb-outs at corners crossings as well as two pedestrian beacons.  County Supervisor Hopkins said that some delays have been understandable, given the lack of documentation for the pipes or old-growth redwood stumps under the sidewalk’s surface. 

    Weiss also said that during the sidewalk excavation, crews “noticed that the roadway drainage was in poor condition and extensive repairs were made.” 

    We certainly have that to look forward to.  It's really the main issue that needs to be resolved, but the rest of the add-ons to meet Caltrans code and bury the wires will make our roughly three-mile project seem longer.  I worry about the fire, police and ambulance response time.  And the illegal delivery truck blockages need to stop.  While ECR isn't our central commercial district, our Broadway and Avenew businesses will probably feel some of the same effect as Guerneville did.  Let's hope it's mild and nobody has to lawyer-up.

  • ECR: The Big Dig schedule eases into next year

    The massive project to "fix" El Camino Real known around town as The Big Dig after the Boston tunnel project has slipped to a Fall 2025 start with the PG&E part slipping into 2026.  The Axeman still cometh for 90% of the eucalyptus, but it looks like they may live to see another winter.  Finalizing the easements from ECR property owners is causing the slippage.  Per the DJ piece

    There are two major elements to the project. One, a Caltrans effort to repair the road, sidewalk and street lights that will span from Millbrae to San Mateo, may begin work by fall of this year, however, that construction may start in one of the other cities first. 

    The second aspect of the project is a Burlingame-specific push for PG&E to underground utilities. The construction start date for that work has been delayed to the second quarter of 2026, Okada said. 

    Delays to Caltrans’ work on the road revamp are being caused in part by the need for signed reconciliations that affirm property owners are aware if their driveways, gardens and retaining walls in the public right-of-way will need to be removed to make way for sidewalk work.

    The city has committed to paying for the reconstruction of those facilities if property owners allow them to be temporarily removed, Burlingame Councilmember Donna Colson said, but has still run into trouble obtaining all of the necessary documentation of the easements.

    Slipping timelines equate to slipping funding and budgets even though inflation is moderating.  Thus, this uncertainty could be concerning as the undergrounding of the power lines is where the hidden problems like 1920's buried fuel tanks and other obstructions surface.

    On the PG&E side, the paperwork for procuring a contractor has been delayed, Okada said. 

    The count of trees to be removed is also a moving target.  It's still a lot of big, beautiful trees, but how many appears to have changed

    The tree removal aspect of the project has long been controversial in Burlingame, which is well-known for its forestry. Plans to take down 382 trees, plant 429 and retain more than 193 trees have slowly come together with input from groups like the Burlingame Historical Society.

    While we wait for the Big Dig to start perhaps Caltrans could throw us a bone and fix the potholes?  The City should formally request a Spring patch along the whole stretch.  I would also like to see the surviving trees be marked as such well before the project begins.  That's just good transparency.  A constant finding in talking to B'gamers is very few have any idea that hundreds of trees are on the chopping block.

    ECR delay

  • Travis AFB: Hypocrisy meter hits 100

    My hypocrisy meter pegged at 100 yesterday reading the SF Comicle article about possibly using Travis AFB near Sacramento as an ICE detention center.  Forget about the proposed use, who proposed it or where it is and all the other stuff that people will endlessly disagree about in the political realm without changing anyone's mind.  My H-meter spiked because of this:

    Federal officials have been looking for months for detention facilities in Northern California and other Western states that could have 850 to 950 detention beds.  Reps. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Mike Thompson, D-Napa, told Hegseth in a May 5 letter that they were “deeply frustrated” and “gravely concerned” about using Travis as a migrant detention center.

    Why might you ask?

    They want the Pentagon to explain how building a detention center would affect Travis’ water and energy infrastructure.

    Sure, filling 950 beds in an established major facility that has housed people since 1942 kicks off concerns about water and electricity.  But building thousands of units that have 2-4 beds in every city and town up and down the state?  Don't worry, there will be plenty of water, sewer capacity, electricity, parking, school capacity, police and fire–fergettaboutit.  Just don't use natural gas.  If you are a big-time Federal politician, you can just throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.  Try that as a regular resident and you are a NIMBY using zoning codes and CEQA as a weapon.  Want to avoid big residential construction on the B'game Bayfront because it lacks said infrastructure?  Too bad.  From the DJ:

    New and proposed state housing laws could mean housing on the Bayfront without specific city standards, despite the city’s intent to limit such development there in its general plan.  New housing was zoned for the north end of Burlingame, near Bay Area Rapid Transit, not on the Bayfront — though proposals for changing zoning there have been floated several times over the years.  The Burlingame City Council and Planning Commission, meeting April 29, in a joint session expressed that the laws will severely undermine the city’s ability to effectively plan its own new housing and undercut its environmental and safety goals.

    Councilmembers expressed frustration that the state was continuing to remove local control from the city’s development process, citing its recent endeavors to meet its state-mandated housing requirements by building out housing in the North Rollins Road area.

    The hypocrisy needle is pinned to the top of the meter.

  • Spanish solar blackout: Will we ignore the warning?

    The usual critique of solar energy is that the sun doesn't shine all the time–and that's certainly true.  But millions of Spaniards, Portuguese and some French people spent hours without any electricity Monday as the over reliance on solar bit them in the culo.  You had to read widely to even hear about it in California since the Green agenda doesn't want to talk about these things.  The WSJ noted:

    Life changed for Spaniards at noon on Monday. With the sun at its peak, the country’s largely solar-powered electrical grid shut down. Mere days before, Spain’s government had announced that its grid had for the first time run entirely on renewable power, with new records set almost daily for solar. Breathless declarations of victory flowed, in service of the government’s promise to phase out reliable nuclear power plants with many years of remaining service life. As in Germany, this promise is now the Spanish politicians’ nightmare.

    The Financial Times had some of the numbers that lead to the collapse of the grid:

    About 55 percent of Spain's supply was from solar sources when 15 gigawatts of electricity generation disconnected from the grid within just five seconds.  Several European experts said Spain appeared to lack enough firm power–readily available, reliable energy supply from sources such as fossil fuels or nuclear that can be reduced or raised–to kick in when the grid's frequency dropped sharply…an oversupply of electricity might have initially caused the problem.  Normally, the grid operator would have managed this by asking traditional plants to moderate their output but this was not possible because so few plants were on line.  Of the scheduled 26 GW of electricity supply on Monday, just 5GW came from non-intermittent sources.

    About a fifth of the country's power normally comes from solar power, but hey, the government wanted to set a new Green record–and they have.  Traffic lights, electric trains, home medical equipment, internet access, ATMs—all of it down for hours.  My part of B'game was out for 50 hours two years ago during the big storms.  We have enough weather and vehicle accident-driven outages without adding more risk by virtue signaling.  As the Journal concluded:

    Events will inevitably test any electrical system’s limits. A rational system should be designed to handle such events. Spain’s system was engineered politically, not rationally. It’s the latest lesson in how not to make energy policy. Will anyone learn from it?

  • Moss Landing battery fire: don’t waste a good crisis?

    With all of the focus on CO2 it's easy to forget there are a lot of other, way more dangerous pollutants being released during emergencies.  The Moss Landing lithium-ion fire adds hydrogen fluoride to the list.  Where's my college chemistry book when I need it?  The various wildfires over the last four years have spewed mega tons of particulate matter ("smoke") and who knows what else from burning cars, houses and businesses.  But all the Sacramento and local government focus has been on our cars, stove tops, BBQs and water heaters.

    Only now is our camera hound governor is calling for an investigation into the massive Moss Landing battery plant fire even though it is either the fourth or fifth fire there in the last four years.

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A fire at the world’s largest battery storage plant in Northern California smoldered Friday after sending plumes of toxic smoke into the atmosphere, leading to the evacuation of up to 1,500 people. The blaze also shook up the young battery storage industry.

    The fire at the Vistra Energy lithium battery plant in Moss Landing generated huge flames and significant amounts of smoke Thursday but had diminished significantly by Friday, Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County said.

    Brad Watson, Vistra’s senior director of community affairs, said two “overheating events” happened at the battery plant in 2021 and 2022 because the batteries got wet. A third incident happened in 2022 in the neighboring Elkhorn battery plant that is owned by PG&E, he said.

    I'm all for huge, grid-based battery storage.  We need it if we have any hope for stability

    California was an early adopter of battery storage and leads the nation with more than 11 gigawatts of utility-scale storage online, which can meet nearly half of the demand on the state’s main grid for four hours per day.

    But like first-generation EV chargers that fail regularly, the devil is in the details.  As Rahm Emanuel said "you never want a good crisis go to waste".  That's the order of the day.

     

    Battery investigation
      

  • Pain plugging in: Electric rates burn holes in wallets

    The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) is out with details regarding something we all know from paying PG&E every month.  Costs are up, up, up.  Specifically:

    California’s electricity rates are among the highest in the country,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported. On average, residential electricity rates in California are close to double those in the rest of the nation.  Average residential electricity rates in California have grown faster than inflation in recent years, rising by about 47% over the four-year period from 2019 through 2023 compared to overall growth in prices of about 18%,” according to the report.  Only Hawaii has higher electricity rates than California, the report determined.

    The LAO pins this on:

    • Increasing stringency of greenhouse gas emission reduction laws for the electricity grid.
    • Accommodating more electricity demand from electrification.
    • Growing demand for funding to support state climate policies. 
    • Wildfire-related costs.

    One of the preeminent energy economists in the world, Bjorn Lomborg, who we profiled here is also back with an update in the WSJ titled "Green energy costs a bundle" that notes a study of 70 countries' costs shows:

    In a country with little or no solar and wind, the average electricity cost is about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour (in today’s money). For every 10% increase in solar and wind share, the electricity cost increases by more than 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. This isn’t an outlier; these results are substantially similar to 2019, before the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

    Germany has installed so much solar and wind that, on sunny and windy days, renewable energy satisfies close to 70% of Germany’s needs—a fact the press eagerly reports. But the press hardly mentions dark and still days, when these renewables deliver almost nothing. Twice in the past two months, when it was cloudy and nearly windless, solar and wind delivered less than 4% of the daily power Germany needed.  Current battery technology is insufficient. Germany’s entire battery storage runs out in about 20 minutes.

    The SF Chronicle looked at the other side of the story last week as new buy-back rates from PG&E et al take a bite out of green ambitions in California:

    In late 2022, state regulators voted to slash the level of that payment by around 75% to bring it closer to market prices. With the electricity they produce worth far less, rooftop panels suddenly didn’t make as much financial sense.

    Beyond the impact on customers’ pocketbooks, the change devastated California’s solar industry when it went into effect in April 2023, prompting a huge drop in home and business panel installations, wiping out thousands of jobs, and forcing local installers to shrink or close up shop altogether.

    That would be 17,000 vaporized jobs to be more specific.  Competing studies assert that non-solar customers are subsidizing solar customers–or vice versa.  What is undeniable is that a bunch of people who would have plunked down tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to contribute to green energy generation have changed their minds.  I would attribute it to the Law of Unintended Consequences, but it was so obvious that it has to be intentional.  Does anyone in Sacramento care to listen to the LAO? 

  • Total Cost of Homeownership: Not just the cost of the house

    For all the talk about our "housing crisis", there is little media or politician discussion about what makes housing expensive here or many, many other places.  The build-our-way-out of it people, like the YIMBYs, just focus on the four walls.  As the letter writer below noted, it's tiresome.  It's also myopic.  The WSJ chimes in today with a piece titled "Insurance and Taxes Now Cost More Than Mortgages for Many Homeowners: Ballooning expenses rewrite the math of homeownership".  The piece zeroes in on home insurance, flood/fire insurance, property taxes and home repair costs and shows

    These ballooning expenses are rewriting the math of homeownership. In September, 32% of the average single-family mortgage payment went to property taxes and home insurance, the highest rate ever for data going back to 2014, according to Intercontinental Exchange.  For a small but increasing share of households, the burden is far more significant. In five major metro areas—Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y.; Omaha, Neb.; New Orleans and Miami—at least a quarter of borrowers spend more than half their monthly mortgage payment on taxes and insurance, according to ICE. 

    These metro areas have high property taxes or pricey home insurance relative to typical home costs, or both.  Nationwide, taxes and insurance make up more than half of the monthly mortgage payment for 9% of single-family mortgages. That is up from less than 4% at the end of 2014. 

    Left out of the equation because of how the study gathered data are the other costs–electricity, natural gas, garbage, sewer/water and bond measures for schools and anything else the politicians can dream up (looking at you Caltrain and sea level rise).  A major variable will always be interest rates, but all of these other factors just pile on and increases get waved through regularly.

    One could even argue the YIMBY mentality will make it all worse.  More grid, more water, more sewage treatment, more classrooms, more, more, more.  Decarbonize your house in the next 10 years?  That won't be easy or cheap as we noted here.  Looking at all of the costs in total reveals the real story–not the faddish one.

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