California is suffering yet another heat wave, and it is causing overloads at substations and in service transformers.
LADWP and SCE are both seeing more outages than they normally do on a blue sky day. Both have crews working hard to restore power as fast as they can.
This is a warning if the weather is going to get more extreme that with the increase in loads from EVs and other premise loads, that it might not take 20 or more years for the load to start causing equipment to fail.
In my own State of Michigan, the interveners are working hard to keep power affordable and reduce outages, while trying to spend no money on increasing capacity. As they argue for less spending, the grid gets older. Since at least 1985, Michigan utilities have been allowed to spend less than 2% (in some years less than 1%) to improve the distribution grid.
At the current rate of spending to upgrade and renew the grid, parts of it will be well over 100 years old before capacity and reliability are dealt with.
I fear that many people will decide for home generators to deal with winter outages, increasing the GHG per kWh consumed. Solar PV in the winter in Michigan is a suckers’ game until we get storage that is cheap enough to have 3 or 4 weeks worth of energy stored from May-June to carry through Dec-Jan.
If we want a reliable grid that can support electric vehicles charging at home, something has to change in what is allowed to happen.
OBTW: 28% of Michigan Families rent (and 55% of minority households rent). So rooftop or backyard solar is not the answer to social equity!
