California declared a power grid emergency Monday ...
... as a blistering and sustained heat wave threatens to push the state’s electricity system to its limit.
With millions of homes and businesses cranking air conditioners to cope with temperatures above 43.3 Celsius, electricity use in the largest US state is forecast to hit 48.9 gigawatts Monday, the most since 2017.
The state’s grid operator is forecasting an energy deficiency between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. local time.
California has aggressively closed natural-gas power plants in recent years, leaving the state increasingly dependent on solar farms that go dark late in the day as demand for electricity peaks.
At the same time, the state is enduring a severe drought, sapping hydropower production.
Why We Need to Build a More Robust Power Grid
Bloomberg 18 August 2022
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2022/08/why-we-need-to-build-more-robust-power.html
La Niña and climate change mix to create a spate of extreme weather in 2022
The recent floods in Pakistan have submerged a third of the country
One of the most powerful sources of climate variability is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (enso)
When the winds blow particularly strongly, more warm water than usual accumulates in the western Pacific, causing more rainfall there, and more cold water comes up from the depths off the coast of South America. This is known as a La Niña—a condition that the world has been in for almost all the past two years.
The Economist 5 Septenber 2022
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