The “Water Cooler” is a feature on Claycord.com where we ask you a question or provide a topic, and you talk about it.
The “Water Cooler” will be up Monday-Friday at noon.
Today’s question:
QUESTION: If you were in charge of the State of California, how would you fix the power problem?
Talk about it….
Vote out Gavin and the Democrats in the Senate and Assembly for starters. Nothing is going to happen until that happens.
You are correct.
+1
+1
So true!
+2
+1
Fastest way to get to the root of the problem. +1
So….. 6 ?
Remove it from office
Solar everywhere. I saw a company making solar trees now for Tesla charging stations. We charge up big batteries with solar panels when we camp and power all kinds of stuff with a big DC converter.
I don’t know how I would fix CA’s power issues; however, I would suggest the following: 1) All new construction should be made with solar roofs (not panels), battery wall packs and water wells 2) The state should start investing in the future and explore all electrical and water solutions – not just talk about the problems but in fact start to build and act on these solutions 3) the solution has to be found in many different baskets (not just one – ie solar) – solar, gas, wind, etc. Maybe start eliminating new builds until a power solution is found and eliminate all of the illegal immigrants coming into the state putting additional strain on CA’s power and water grid.
1. Lithium carbonate prices more than doubled since 2015. Battery-grade lithium prices tripled since 2015. These battery wall packs are EXPENSIVE. Can you guess what will happen if new construction is required to have them? And without storage, solar roofs are largely useless.
2. The problem is not just an “electrical solution” – it’s “the” electrical solution, namely, providing cheap energy during peak demand (3-9 pm) and sitting idle outside of this interval. Which means that solar and wind are out, leaving gas, nuclear or hydroelectric. Except that CA had retired a lot of its gas power plants (since 2013 CA lost ~5,000 MW or about 15% of its gas capacity). Diablo Canyon was scheduled to retire in 2025 (and may still be retired, despite the recent bill). Which is a loss of another 2,200 MW of on-demand capacity. And there is no water to run hydroelectric plants. I don’t know – may be we can start pumping sand up and down in Death Valley, powered by all the solar panels and wind turbines in the Mojave desert?
3. Or we can get rid of the morons passing idiotic bills, like the recent ban on gas-powered vehicles. But I think pumping sand in Death Valley would be easier.
It can’t be fixed until the greenies give up with all the stupid green energy crap.
Nuclear is the only solution and they better get on the ball because it’s at least 10 plus years to get any new plant built or even an old one up and back running again however the existing plant that is still running I think can add four more reactors to it which will help until the slack is taken up with getting the other ones back online or new ones built there is no other solution.
Hey Newscum take a look at the stupid green energy idiots in Germany now realizing how stupid they all are going all green and are now reopening the nuke plants again so they can survive
Some people just don’t get it, green energy ain’t gonna help, fix the problem and neither is wind or solar.
And what about the waste? Hmmmm so it’s okay to create a waste dump behind your house. And no sending it to other states IS NOT AN OPTION. And how do you suggest preventing a Three Mile Island or Chernobyl incident?
If you can figure out waste storage and meltdown prevention then nuclear would be great, but until then it is not a solution just another problem
Get rid of DEM control of this state.
Do away with all government subsidies for “green energy”, it stands or fails on it’s own. Subsidies stifle innovation.
NO generation capacity is taken off line until scalable replacement generation facilities are online and operating at a lower cost to rate payers.
Unelected bureaucrats would be held accountable for their mistakes, “green” failures, or increasing cost to consumers of energy resulting in immediate firing.
Arrest Klaus Schwab and any of his world economic forum minions.
That includes Nancy’s Nephew.
Manufactured “problem” would then be solved.
Fix and reinstate Nuclear Power.
There are more pros than cons to it.
Roz what about waste disposal? Do you want a disposal facility behind your house? You have to be willing to deal with the waste and not just send down the road. Other states don’t want and should not have to take CA’s nuclear waste.
Then there is the construction of plants that can withstand earthquakes. It would have to withstand at minimum a 10 point quake. Remember this is America where everything lately is built on the cheap
You could fix the entire state by simply voting Republican. Every state in the nation that is run by Democrats is, for a lack of a better word, a “crap” hole.
Untrue. Texas has power grid problems as big as CA and is run by Republicans.
Un-Plug It.
I have no idea, I will leave up to someone smarter than me. However, when I hear different solutions I imagine I will be able to differentiate between good and bad solutions.
Do not remove existing nuclear power plants. Safely build more nuclear power plants. Build additional power generating dams where environmentally feasible.
Repeal law forbidding the sale of new gasoline powered vehicles starting 2035. Ridiculous to force people to buy electric vehicles and then tell them not to charge them since the electrical grid will not handle the load.
Nuke it.
Break up PG&E and turn it into a bunch of regional publicly run utilities. This is what the public wanted and what Newsom said he was going to do. Then a little thing called a “pandemic” came along. Remember?
Since the Pandemic the leg shaking up and down when seated is so out of control.
Everyone is on edge and full of anxiety in these Biden/Newsom times.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/20/anxious-leg-bounce-happens-deal-9277508/
Yes, the State has a long reputation for operating its various departments super efficiently, right? No one ever has any problems at the DMV, Getting my driver’s license renewed with a Real ID in 2018 only took me three days.
Captain
That right there would be a fabulous start. And while we are at it make power companies “not for profits” or “enterprise fund” entities. Million dollar bonus for the big guys and million dollar dividend for the big share holders at the expense of the consumer is ridiculous
Yes, get rid of the Klaus Schwab’s WEF puppet along with their other Khazarian puppets.
The WEF has sponsored Newsom (it shows this on their web site) along with Justin Trudeau and Peter Buttleig (sp?) along with many otger bought-and-paid-for Green Enery pedophiles and stooges.
PG&E needs to go, they & their equipment are the problem
And their “record profits” while filing bankruptcy to get our from under the murder they committed in San Bruno and with countless fires.
Bankruptcy after giving the big dogs million dollar bonuses and million dollar dividends to the top 3% of shareholders. How can you file bankruptcy and do that? Because you are way to big for the peoples good
#1- Expand fracking
#2-Toss Newsom out, and make him bus tables at the French
Laundry for the rest of his life.
#3-Deport the millions of illegals that are sucking up our precious
resources.
#4- Break up the biggest crime syndicate in the state, PG&E.
If more people really understood Fracking, what it is, how it works, and what it does, many would no longer be against it.
@The Fearless Spectator
That is true! But unfortunately “more people” don’t get the straight story on anything from their liberal media. All they hear and all they believe is a bunch of agenda driven “information”.
1. Start by getting rid of Newsom, get somebody that won’t cozy up to the CPUC & PG&E. 2. Stop the demolition of the numerable dame he’s planning, that will help with power generation & water reserves for the local residents, 3. Don’t even think of going “all green” until you can get a reliable generation of power to even surpassing the 60MW on a daily basis, because that’s where we’re headed with all the housing Newsom has approved for this year. 4. Put a moratorium on new housing not yet “shovel in the ground”, we don’t have the power or water.
Randy
not much is coming over the dams for hydro because there is no water. Drought in the west is nothing new. Actually CA is not lush land but high desert by nature. And for year PG&E has relied on surplus power for Puget Power in WA but that’s no longer available to due to tech industry and other business expansion and massive populaiton growth in the PNW.
I grew up in the outer Claycord area in a house with no AC and we did fine. I live in the high desert now and my AC died over a week ago. Ceiling fans kept the house between 83-85 during the day and I didn’t die. Anyone that doesn’t have ceiling fans is a fool and it keeps the AC from kicking on and running endlessly. When the AC works it’s set at
78-80. There are little things people can do to help.
And don’t know it you know this but the City of Alameda and City of Santa Clara have their own power plants and their resedents have historically paid and about 60% of what PG&E cutomers pay. PG&E needs to be broken up
Buy the electricity from China (chuckle here). Nobody seems to push back on them building all those coal burning plants.
Fire Gavin
How about some real ideas. Getting rid of people seems to be the stock answer for everything. If your choice of people were in office what should they do to take care of the power issues? Come on put some thought into the Mayor’s question!
It’s not getting rid of people. Is getting rid of the democrats that over the last 40 years have created this mess. Name one place that the Dems control that is functioning with out a ton of problems
Sick
Like the Republicans in Texas have done a bang up job with their power grid. Uhhhh NOT!!!
Yes Texas has had a bad year with there power grid. But not year after year like CA. And part of there problem was the rise in use by all the people leaving CA and moving there to get away from the incompetence of this states elected officials and the damage they have done here
Commonsenor, Texas and Florida have major power grid problems as well. It helps to do a little research. Captain Bebops, you’re spot on.
Move to another State.
+1
Bring back the Peaker Plants.
Start a campaign that the best green energy is nuclear. They have a micro-plant solution, so put one at about every PG&E substation. Create good jobs, like granpa Joe always says. Force PG&E to pay a higher price to those with solar for putting power back to the grid. Incentives work, people could see the math work. Buying a system with a 2 year payback, then start earning money for generating it, I’m in tomorrow.
Tesla had the right idea. Electricity from the air. Then no need for corrupt poilticians and corrupt corporations.
In the meantime, nuclear, natural gas, coal, helium, and all sorts of other clean energy scources are available and should be used.
Putting in place solar and wind as the only energy generators is a fools mission.
No to coal. Not only is it a massive polluter but the health issues to the workers are profound. My grandfather was a coal miner in western WA and was one of the lucky ones as he didn’t not end up with lung disease. But I remember him coming home covered in soot and the the town being very sooty due to coal stoves and other coal operating things.
Bottom line is there is no such thing as clean coal.
To itsme, Why should the United States bear the burden of saving the rest of the planet and pay $$$ for it???
How about you acknowledging the elephant in the room…..the world economic forum and their planned “reset” aka take down. “You will own Nothing, and be happy”.
I didn’t say it, research it and join on the Correct side.
Built dams! Solve water problem along with electric problem. Plus nuclear. Germany & France us them, and they’re not dumb!
Well when Germany made the gas pipeline deal with Russia that wasn’t exactly an Einstein moment was it?
Well, we ARE in a bit of a sticky wicket. California would need to permit, build, troubleshoot, commission and add to the grid dozens of nuclear generating facilities if we are to go to net zero power. It takes YEARS to build just one plant. Good luck to us with that!
Then we would have to de-bottleneck the grid. The increase in load is going to have to be handled by an infrastructure that is not near large enough. Lots of transmission lines need to be upgraded. How much will it cost to have your EV charger(s) installed in your house?
Solving California’s energy situation just might be beyond our reach as we allowed years and years to go by wasting money of “renewables” and not keeping up with the existing facilities.
AD
Let’s start with something simple. TRIM THE TREES AWAY FROM THE POWER LINES. My power goes off a lot and it’s always the same reason.
Easy, remove all Democrats from the state. Problem solved.
So the Dems are gone in your perfect world. Now how do the Republicans fix the problem?
Ok, so the Dems are gone. What do the Republicans do about it now?
Give the republicans a chance and if they fail vote them out. Mabey we should start voting for the person and not just the party they belong to.
@itsme
Can you name one democratic city or state that runs well????
No you can’t because there isn’t one.
Throw UN Agenda 2030 into the trash can. It’s delusional authors read too much sci-fi back in the day. We can’t get there in 8 years. Maybe not even 80 years.
We need to investigate decentralized reliable power stations. Each one could cover about 5000 homes. They either run on clean burning natural gas spinning a jet turbine, or a small underground nuclear plant (Think Navy). With more smaller plants, provisions could be quickly developed to meet this fast developing emergency.
None of the above ideas should be managed by politicians. (“Bullet train”) It would have to be a no kiddin’ fast track effort a la the Manhattan project (for all you history literate types out there.)
In the early 90’s, the PG&E electric grid was reliable. The lawyers and bean counters got control of the company during the Diablo Canyon licensing process. This started the almost 30 year era of differed maintenance. The next disaster was deregulation in the early 2000’s under then governor Davis. PG&E’s system further diluted by poorly run utilities around the state, and the state forcing sale of most PG&E power plants and contracts.
Please explain… diluted by poorly run other utilities around the state? Not sure how those utilities would affect PGE’s performance. Want to understand.
Not to hijack the thread but this is important:
The EIA estimates that over 10% of the daily U.S. natural gas production is now being exported, which is drawing down US natural gas inventories to seasonally low levels. As expected this is driving US prices up further.
For those who think it’s the energy companies causing the price change, they’re dead wrong. Prices at the hub where it’s metered and sold have tripled in the past twelve months.
Look for both heating and electric bills to increase substantially as a result. Transitioning to renewables is decades away. We need a change in policy now.
Listen I’m all for “green energy” but there is a big problem the world is 20-50 years early to go all renewable and stop oil, NG, coal etc. Once again they are putting the cart before the horse. There will be a time and place for it, NOW IS NOT the time.
We should be building housing with solar roof or panels on every new build. Battery backup systems should be installed in major cities to have the ability to store and use that energy after daylight hours.
I could give 100 other valid reasons but why chances are this will not get posted anyway!!!!
No more PG&E, break up the monopoly and actually reinvest back into the state’s infrastructure.
Something that makes sense!!!
Finally something that makes sense!!!
Just tried replying saying it’s a great idea and was told it’s a duplicate reply. Where’s the first one?
Sorry but I think the whole state is broken beyond any repair.
Nuclear is the ONLY viable solution within the next 25 years.
I would harness the hot air from the steam piling dung coming out of the mouths of our politicians and generate a few BTUs. Keep pulling that lever blue, folks……
@Sick of it…..your still not offering any solutions. So you get rid of the Dems. What does the GOP need to do to fix it?See that’s my point, most everyone on here says get rid of the Dems but offer no ideas as to how to actually fix the problem.
Give the GOP a chance. A change of leadership may solve a lot of problems. If the Dems were afraid of losing their jobs maybe, they would work a little harder to solve the state’s problems.
Itsme.
The republicans have had no voice in this state for years. What good has the democrats done for this state by having total control of it. They have made a mess of it, and will continue to do so as long as they complete control. Getting rid of them would be a great start for a solution. It would offer the chance for new ideas to come in. They have proven that there ways don’t work and cost all of us a lot of money in wasted projects and programs. Sticking with the familiar is not the way to fix the problem, when it is that that caused them
How it was then and how it is now. –
https://tinyurl.com/2f8euj8j
Democrat economic policies are secondary and a sham, their real motivators are primitive emotions; envy, resentment, and revenge.
Prove me wrong.
So I’ve attempted to reply to a couple of posts then get a message saying it’s a duplicate reply but the first replies are not posted. What’s the deal? Is someone picking and choosing what is posted?
It’s simple!! More electric cars!!
Stop new construction.
Nuclear generation, fast breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing in combination with expanded wind and solar. If possible, increased conversion of forest* and agricultural waste biomass to fuels.
* plus improved forest management to mitigate fire risk.
We could fix all these power problems by getting rid of the environmental BCrats running our govt in Sacramento.
We have a resource, of sorts, with our trash. We need to process our own recycling, of e-waste and all of our trash. Others have mentioned similar solutions. If we processed our e-waste, not just better but at all, we would not need to secure more mineral rights because we already possess enough material in our trash.
Nuclear is hard for me to commit to, but I think if we focused on using it for power instead of our current system where we prioritize weapons grade manufacturing, we would be in a better direction because we would have less by-product. That is the issue after all.
But I happen to think that as long as military armaments and for-profit ventures are allowed to reign as they have been, nothing else will be prioritized. We cannot be a bystanders in our society and that is what the current system does. Profits over people.
If you took politics and ideology out of the room and gave engineers and scientists the mission to provide reliable and affordable power for the projected population, it would totally be achievable. But that isn’t how Kleptofornica works, the single-party rulers will continue to ruin the state, and I do not see enough intelligent voters to turn the tide.
My suggestion is to flee while you still can!
Get rid of PG&E, Their rates double every 5 years and we are still short of energy.