North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: More demand or less supply?
There's an interesting sidebar in an old "America's Network" magazine about why there was a shortage. It's too long to include here (and likely too far off-topic), so here's a link. They don't include this sidebar in their online edition, and I typed it in after a similar debate over at the datacenter list: http://www.inch.com/~spork/calpower.txt Charles | Charles Sprickman | Internet Channel | INCH System Administration Team | (212)243-5200 | [email protected] | [email protected] On 18 May 2001, Sean Donelan wrote: > > NERC is predicting California (and therefor Internet data centers > in the region) may be subject to almost daily rolling blackout > throughout the summer. Although most major Internet data centers > have backup generators, the historical reliability data everyone > uses is based on "normal" power conditions in the USA, not daily > rolling blackouts. > > Is California really out of power? News reports indicate California > is consuming less power than the same time last year. > > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/05/03/MN202545.DTL > > Energy consumption was down 9.2 percent, or 2,967 megawatts in March > > compared with the same time last year. In February, the number was 8 > > percent, or 2,578 megawatts, and in January it was 6.2 percent or 2,091 > > megawatts. > > So why are there power shortages in California? > > http://www.latimes.com/business/reports/power/lat_suit010518.htm > > A Times analysis of state data found that, throughout the last two months, > > about 12,000 megawatts of production was offline, more than a third of the > > peak power used in California on a typical day. That has been about evenly > > divided between scheduled and sudden plant shutdowns. > > By contrast, shutdowns in the same period of 1999 and 2000 took only > > 3,300 to 5,700 megawatts offline. > > Why is 2 to 3 times more capacity offline this year compared with previous > years? I don't know. It appears the "supply" shortage is not due to > increased demand, or even the lack of new power plant capacity; but due > to the shutdown of existing capacity by generation companies at a higher > rate than normal. > > Normally, when demand drops you would expect prices to fall. Consumption > is down between 6.2% and 9.2%. However, in California generating companies > have shut down power plants faster than demand fell, creating shortages > and prices have been rising. > > It will be an interesting summer. > > >
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