Tea at Trianon: The Unraveling of California’s Power Grid

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 7, 2022

The Unraveling of California’s Power Grid

From UnDark:

“California Burning” is an expansion of that reportage, charting the history of PG&E from its Wild West-flavored early days through the stability of the mid-20th century, the turmoil of the late-20th century, and the malfeasance and climate-fueled disasters that have dogged it into the 21st. What emerges is a detail-dense account, but one that drills into increasingly urgent questions and implications. As of this writing, a new wildfire was just contained in Northern California, while earlier this month, an unprecedented heat wave caused PG&E to once again threaten rolling blackouts. And the relevance of this tale isn’t just confined to the West Coast — it should alarm anybody who’s ever turned on a light. As Blunt writes: “PG&E’s failure isn’t just a California story. It is, in many ways, a harbinger of challenges to come as climate change exacerbates the vulnerability of the grid, built decades ago to serve a different era of electricity demand.”

The first half of Blunt’s book traces the history of that grid. PG&E was one of many utility companies founded after the Gold Rush as California’s population exploded. After decades of competition, PG&E merged with a company called Great Western Power in 1930 and became a monopoly: prevailing wisdom at the time posited that it made little sense for utility companies to build redundant infrastructure. Instead, public good companies like PG&E shouldn’t have to deal with competition. A regulator would set fair prices and protect consumers from price swings.

This system worked — for a while. PG&E enjoyed a successful tenure in the boom years after World War II. During that time, they doubled their capacity to produce power as California flourished. But after a series of energy cost crises in the 1970s and 1980s, PG&E began the process of deregulation, setting out to compete on the market. The problem is that unlike most goods, electricity is difficult to supply in a competitive market. Produce too much electricity and transmission lines get congested; produce too little, and the grid goes down. Deregulation was a disaster, a “monster set loose,” Blunt writes, leading to soaring prices and rolling blackouts. (Read more.)