PG&E rolling blackouts during heatwave (Aug 14 2020 —> ?)

[180r]

200-250k customers to be affected for “about an hour” on a rolling schedule as needed.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article244979030.html

Powerwall customers and others, report your experiences here

My only observation so far: Storm Watch is not enabled.

 

[zanary]

Storm Watch not yet activated in the Bay Area. I’m sure it will activate.

 

[woferry]

My power went out at 6:15, though it wasn't a rolling outage but 38 customers on my street affected (one side of the street only), so it's still out. This being only my second non-simulated outage, things went much worse than the previous times. I think the difference is that due to the heat I had a portable AC (9,000 BTU, 1375W nameplate rating) running in a bedroom. Because this unit can't even maintain temperature in the small room it's in, the compressor had been running non-stop since the morning, putting the total house load right around 2000W throughout the day. As best as I can tell, the PW shifting the grid frequency up to 65Hz must have caused the AC to surge, and everything in the house went out for a second or so (at least I didn't have to reset/jump-start anything). The microgrid came back up at the 65Hz level (PW was at 100%), so the AC came back on fan-only to let the compressor recover. 5 minutes later it tried to turn on the compressor again, and again everything went out for a second or so. Next time I switched the unit to fan-only and the power stayed up. About 30 minutes later the PW was below 95%, so the frequency was back to 60Hz (the one inverter behind the PW came back up, but was only producing ~300W at this point since the sun was setting), I let the AC turn on again and the compressor ran just fine for the next hour and a half before I shut it off for the evening.

So I guess I really need to call and have my max frequency lowered, and see if the AC behaves any better at 62-63Hz. I'm also going to try to flip which inverter connects to the backup side of the house (need to see if the wires are long enough to swap, since the breakers end up in different panels), since the west-facing plane was on the grid-side inverter so the maximum late-afternoon production was offline with the grid out. I might have been closer to 1kW if the inverters had been swapped.

One strange thing, it took over an hour for the app to report the outage. PG&E had texted me within minutes, and initially the app was showing the grid as dark, but no X over it or orange border. Eventually it changed, not sure what finally prompted it to do so. I'd looked at the app at least a dozen times between the initial outage and when it finally switched, and it was getting updated data from the Gateway.

Unfortunately my Raspberry Pi that I log the Gateway REST API from rebooted and the Gateway didn't automatically re-join my WiFi network after my router rebooted. I need to check, but I think the GW API is also available from the GW's WiFi network (TEG-XXX), I should try putting the RPi on that network to see if it can get a more continuous data feed, since putting my Gateway on ethernet isn't something I can easily do. My router had never failed in previous outages, so losing API connectivity hadn't been an issue before.

 

[bmah]

Storm Watch not yet activated in the Bay Area. I’m sure it will activate.

I’m not convinced...this isn’t the kind of widespread event as the PSPS events last fall. Also activating Storm Watch would result in more load on the grid with Powerwalls charging up.

In any case we’ll find out one way or the other...

Bruce.

 

[SMAlset]

Saw the Flex Alert issued earlier today and then the report of Stage 3 rolling blackouts. Ah yes those Rolling Block areas. Not even sure I’ve seen our bill recently and noticed ours.

We set our A/C as suggested and this is going to be a bad weekend and week it looks like. Our town set up a cooling center but said with distancing can only accommodate 10 people! Our install is still apparently scheduled for Monday/Tuesday but we won’t expect to have solar/PW until weeks out I guess. Interesting to read people's experiences who do have their system in place all the same.

I am kind of surprised that given SO many large corporations and other businesses are closed due to covid with their energy usage dropped that the State needed to do this.

 

[eevee-fan]

Storm watch mode to charge starting 7am thru 5pm (10 hr) then discharge it from 5pm - 10pm (5 hr) would probably work, not everyone has PW.

 

[cwerdna]

My power never went out but a few folks at my work (at home) reported outages in the Bay Area.

 

[eevee-fan]

PG&E has incentive programs for people to save power during these emergencies... would be good to identify the PW owners and give them some kin do incentive to be fully self sustaining during these periods. Would be even better if we have V2H, then more people can go off grid for a few days a year.

 

[cwerdna]

Would be even better if we have V2H, then more people can go off grid for a few days a year.

Good luck with that. It's not clear any Teslas actually support V2H. CCS doesn't support it yet.

There are a whole bunch of V2X – Chademo Association but with Nissan's Ariya announcement, it seems that CHAdeMO is toast in the US now (as much as I hate to say it as I have a Leaf which doesn't have CHAdeMO but did lease one with it for 2 years before). I've personally seen some of the above boxes and some in use, attached to Leafs and in one case, a JDM Clarity FCEV.

Seems like V2H in the US is going to be years away, unlike Japan which has had thousands of such systems deployed for years already.

PG&E has incentive programs for people to save power during these emergencies...

They have PG&E's SmartRate plan. I was on one of these plans before but not now.

 

[jboy210]

We had a brief power outage Friday morning. Powerwall took over for 5 minutes. Power was good Friday night.

 

[getakey]

I had a bad feeling with the high temps so I set system on Backup yesterday morning. At 7pm, went out to the deck to have a cocktail. Still 100 degrees, so turned on a mister system that I installed last year. Sat down and text from PG&E saying my house is in an outage. PWs took over with no glitch. Didn't even see the TV flicker. Was a little concerned about both AC units being able to startup, but both were running fine. Outage lasted a little over 2 hours. They did not say that it was part of the rolling outages. Said "crews on scene"

 

[Merrill]

So let me see, we have fires caused from power lines and poles falling so no electricity during windy conditions and now rolling black outs because to much demand. Guess what when it gets hot people use their A/C, so again Pacific Graft and Extortion raising rates and not spending money on infrastructure so we pay more and get less.

 

[getakey]

There are gas fired plants built in the last 10 years or so that were shuttered due to "over building"

 

[wjgjr]

I’m not convinced...this isn’t the kind of widespread event as the PSPS events last fall. Also activating Storm Watch would result in more load on the grid with Powerwalls charging up.

In any case we’ll find out one way or the other...

Bruce.

Who/what actually controls storm watch? I understand for actual weather, NWS (for the US) issues alerts and I would assume storm watch automatically activates based on that. But, are there automated processes for other public safety issues like the PSPS shutoffs or rolling blackouts? Or, is this just handled by Tesla if and when they get word from the utility or hear about it through media channels? It would be cool if utilities had some sort of standard reporting for these planned outages that could also allow Tesla and the utility to activate storm watch at the best time, but I am guessing this doesn't currently exist.

 

[holeydonut]

So let me see, we have fires caused from power lines and poles falling so no electricity during windy conditions and now rolling black outs because to much demand. Guess what when it gets hot people use their A/C, so again Pacific Graft and Extortion raising rates and not spending money on infrastructure so we pay more and get less.

It's also weird the local news reported that PG&E expected solar energy production to dip due to overcast/cloudy conditions causing the energy supply shortfall. So they're saying it'll be 108 degrees inland with lots of clouds. What?

 

[getakey]

yeah - we had clouds and 105

 

[EVortex]

We have had several afternoon and evening power outages in Rocklin in Placer County over the last couple of weeks. They affected a few thousand people for 2-3 hours each time and there were no prior warnings from PG&E, but when we called in for updates their periodic call back updates worked well.

 

[aesculus]

Storm Watch not yet activated in the Bay Area. I’m sure it will activate.

Well that is an interesting question and the statement can be answered as a basic "no"

In a press release, the utility said following the direction from CAISO, power will be turned off in rotating blocks until about 11 p.m. on Friday night. Each "block" could have no power for about an hour.

"Californians are being urged to continue to conserve power until 11 p.m. tonight to reduce power usage as supplies run tight during the peak period today," the company said.

PG&E said these are not Public Safety Power Shutoffs, which are conducted during high fire threat conditions.

Due to the emergency, the utility said it will be "unable to notify customers in advance of the power shutoffs, which could occur anywhere within PG&E’s service area."

PG&E said these shutoffs will impact about 200,000 to 250,000 customers during each given "block".

And these were not all (any?) rotating outage blocks. They took out huge areas at once and for more than the promised hour.

El Dorado County is made up of at least 12 rotating outage blocks. They took all of the county out (they don't support SLT and a few tiny areas to the north and south east) at one fell swoop for almost two hours last night (~73,000 customers).

 

[aesculus]

My own experience: I was on Cost Savings and a Friday, so the system naturally thought it could charge the PWs minimally just to get me to the weekend and export as much power as possible to PG&E for credit (I am on EVA-1). Because it was so hot and we had some cloud cover my solar yield was also about 80% of normal (21 kWh vs 26 kWh). So I did not get the PWs charged as much as normal before peak hit and then the PWs started exporting at 2PM. At 6pm I ended up reducing my reserve down to 40% to avoid peak chargers even with my A/C throttled way back.

Then around 6:30 we got our power turned off. Thinking first it was just local I let things run for about 30 minutes while I investigated. I checked PG&Es outage website and the map was not active. Entering my address they accepted the outage info and stated they would investigate. So I decided to risk it and again lowered my reserve to 30%.

Note: it was another 45 minutes before they stated they would restore power at 9:45 and that it was an "emergency".

Not only were my neighbors calling and texting about being out of power but I started getting feedback from all over the county.

At about 7 I decided to turn off the AC units because they suck about 7kW of power in total when on. And they were cycling fairly frequently. Now I am down to 32% and only producing about 400 W of my base load of 900 W at a loss of 500 watts per hour.

I limped along with my PWs discharging slowly to just about 30% when the power was restored around 8:40, so 2:02 was what is reported in the app for our backup duration.

So basically I need to rethink my strategy when ISO declares a possible event. I should never had exported my power to PG&E at the start of the peak period. I could have used that to keep my house at least comfortable. Even for those two hours it went from my conservative 82F to 85F, and humid. We actually opted to go outside in the 95F heat in the shade with a bit of a breeze by a pond, as that felt better. Plus the bats put on a super air show swooping into the pond to get a drink and flying by each other twisting and turning. Almost worth the hassle of the power outage.

 

[israndy]

There are gas fired plants built in the last 10 years or so that were shuttered due to "over building"

When PG&E opens its new Tesla PowerMegaWall it should be able to abate some of these outages. I think I read that they were opening several battery plants like the Tesla one in Moss Eisley, er, Landing. They will cover the various parts of the state like El Dorado that seemed to be an issue last night