Posted on 02/22/2006 7:26:11 AM PST by rellimpank
The unexpected power outages that hit the Front Range over the bitterly cold weekend had real-life consequences and merit close scrutiny. Xcel Energy, which provides heat and power to metro Denver, says it pulled the plug on 300,000 customers for a half-hour Saturday morning during controlled, rolling blackouts. However, Xcel acknowledges that 25,000 customers lost power for as long as five hours. It's unclear whether the longer outages correlated with reports of water pipes freezing and damaging homes, but in any case, the breadth and length of the blackouts - and the secrecy that surrounded it - were unacceptable.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
The problem was the lack of wind with this cold spell.
The people signed up for windpower should have been the ones cut off.
An interesting note: They had to close the store because WalMart has a corporate policy only to use solar powered back-up generators. The cashier told us that they only hold a 20-30 minute supply.
Must be because of global warming.
---correlates with my belief that power and oil companies should be able to exclude Sierra Club members from buying any of their products--
--that would sound like the emergency lighting was about all they had--
Yes- the computers went down as we were checking out. Fortunately, the store has a lot of skylights, so we could still see. But, turning away all those Saturday shoppers had to cost some bucks ! And I think frozen food has a very small window of time before state laws require that it all be thrown out.
I have no idea how utility companies "purchase" power. But I'm assuming there is no shortage of electricity since (using the increasingly popular buzzword du jour) its "fungible". So if there's no shortage of electricity (unless the dams literally ice up and the water ceases to flow), doesn't that mean they're (meaning the ute co's)shutting off electricity to save themselves money, rather than conserve electricity? the CEO of Avista makes $2.57 MILLION a year. I'm sure he doesn't make that because he's so good at conserving energy but because Avista pays out a significant profit to the stockholders. (IMHO)
Generating plants have a peak capacity and if it is in danger of being exceeded the only practical option is to cut off parts of the load--
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