California turns off much more than just the forced blackout lights

Running on solar power is not necessarily protection against California's new "planned" power outages, and local residents and businesses can withstand much more than just a few drawbacks.

Bloomberg's Chris Martin has a history of California's problems with one of my favorite headlines ever: "Californians learn that solar panels don't work in blackouts." Apparently, many of California's future land-savers didn't think that just putting solar panels on the roof didn't means they will have power when PG&E turns it off. As Martin explains:

Most panels are designed to supply power to the grid ̵[ads1]1; not directly to houses. During the heat of the day, solar systems can produce more juice than a home can handle. Conversely, they do not produce electricity at all at night. So systems are tied up in the web, and most don't work this week as PG&E Corp cuts power to large parts of Northern California to prevent fires.

The only way for most solar panels to work during a blackout is to pair them with batteries. That market is just starting to pick up. Sunrun Inc., the largest rooftop solar energy company, said some of its customers do so through the battery blackouts, but there is a small group – countable for hundreds.

Martin cites Sunrun Chairman Ed Fenster who explains that solar with local battery storage is "the perfect combination to get through these shutdowns", though he fails to mention what an expensive proposition it is, especially in the rural areas most affected by California's return to the primitive. Parties, if companies sell just these batteries, expect battery sales to "increase" now that the promised blackouts have begun.

If you wonder what that smell is, it's the smell of crony capitalism – and it stinks. [19659002] At UC Berkeley, where you expect all this planetary saving to be applauded, at least one student is probably less than thrilled. ABC7 reports that biochem grad student Sarah Morris says the recent power outage – again, a planned and intentional interruption – "may have ruined two years of her pioneering cancer research, valued at $ 500,000." If you're wondering what it's value could have been for cancer victims who may now never get the benefits of Morris's research, I suspect you're not alone.

Ironically, given that the blackouts are called "Public Safety Power Shut-Offs," the California public is enjoying less security every time the power goes out. Even PG&E, which you think may be better prepared for their own planned interruptions, is affected. PG&E CEO Bill Johnson admitted last week, “Our website crashed several times. Our maps are inconsistent and maybe incorrect. Our call centers were overloaded. "He added," To put it simply, we were not adequately prepared to support the operative event. "

Far up north in my old stamp area in Eureka, California, you can see the immediate WSJ talking to Melanie Bettenhausen, who runs the Eureka location for the local North Coast Co-Op grocery chain – at least for now (Full disclosure: I was a regular customer in the early 90's.) Journal reports:

Mrs. Bettenhausen, 44 years old, worked 34 hours straight to keep the store open by using generators to run registers and dry ice to cool the food.

When she arrived on Thursday morning, the walk-in refrigerator was full of spoiled dairy products. Everything – tens of thousands of dollars worth of food – had to be thrown away. "I don't even know yet if we will make it," she said. "Anyone looking to support their family and maintain a home in this area needs to plan."

Indeed. The North Coast is not exactly California's richest region, long dependent on harvesting and fishing, both of which have been reduced by "experts" far away in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Now they can't even keep the milk cold for their kids. Or as WSJ put it, the area is "subject to the kind of abrupt interruptions normally associated with underdeveloped countries."

California, especially under the late Democratic Governor Pat Brown (Jerry's far more competent father), invested in forward-looking infrastructure that was the envy of the nation. But in recent decades, water infrastructure has slowed down, putting farmers in the Central Valley at the mercy of the state's notorious speck of rains. Victor Davis Hanson noted five years ago that the region "would have been depopulated a long time ago without the infrastructure that a previous, wiser generation built and that the last-day regulators and environmentalists were so randomly expelled." In the time since VDH wrote these words, Sacramento has grown increasingly hostile to the type of infrastructure projects required by the state's huge population.

And now, rather than clearing the scrub, which makes California's inherent problem of fires so much worse, they shed light – on the people of the state, about their medical research, about their businesses, about the future of the state. So if you were thinking of telling the last person to leave California to turn off the lights, don't bother – they will be off already.