Island EVs

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bwilson4web

bwilson4web

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I understand Puerto Rico had another, island wide power outage. But also has a reputation for a single, poorly run utility and weather sensitive grid. All powered by an old coal powered plant.
  • utility rates?
  • Independent solar/wind/renewables?
  • Critical services battery augmented by solar or wind?
  • Military bases and airfields power provisions?
What about other islands?

Bob Wilson
 
Here in Hawaii, there's one electric utility, Hawaiian Electric. They have their issues, but are at least less terrible than my former utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, which is a continuing plague on northern California. Rates are higher than much of the country, though not the absolute highest, and vary a bit from island to island.

We have a lot of solar on private homes and businesses and a growing percentage of renewables in the grid, much of it provided by independent companies that contract with Hawaiian Electric. Lots of military here, mainly on Oahu and here on the Big Island, but I have no clue about their power su pply.
 
Before he went insane, Musk sent at least one grid-level, battery backup system to Puerto Rico. IMHO, every power substation should have at least one of these units to handle transients. This would significantly improve grid stability.

Bob Wilson
 
I do not know whether Hawaii has any sort of battery backups. Power outages certainly do happen here -- actually, I just had one, but happily it only lasted 20 minutes or so. No extreme weather near me today, so I don't know what the cause was.
 
bwilson4web said:
Piss-poor engineering by the utility company!

Bob Wilson
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No doubt. Admittedly, weather conditions here change suddenly and can disrupt even well-situated/planned equipment, but this was relatively localized -- a few square miles -- in an area where the weather was quite mild when it happened, so it's not like they can blame extreme winds or a thunderstorm.
 
A million reasons for localized power outages, from vegetation, to weather, to vandalism, to accidents. I didn't consider it piss-poor engineering when the transfer truck backed over the transformer and took out a big chunk of downtown where I was working. We of course had a genny and UPS's for the computer rooms.

It's always fun to blame city hall, but you also must remember you are city hall. Most states set their rates via some sort of state regulated entity, and you voted those people into office. The biggest problem is everyone wants to play do-gooder, and put up solar and windmills, sacrificing the other infrastructure that supports current needs and growth so as not to raise the price of the power. What ends up happening, is the poco ends up paying more to fix problems created by lack of upgrade and maintenance they skipped to keep the rates down. Add in a little graft around the emergency fixups, and pretty soon you are paying California rates for your power. Good decisions all around there.

Many years back my friend was the CFD for Boulder City NV. They had a sweet deal, they paid 0.03/kwh for power in the city. They decided they would put in Solar, the townfolk decided they wanted to make sure they were using the solar power which, at the time, was around 0.40/kwh. So he asked the town council, if they wanted to double, or quadruple the bill for the townfolk. After looking at the puzzled expressions, he explained: If they blended in 10% of the solar cost locally the users cost per KWH would go from .03 to 6.7. But it can't be that much? (9*.03 + 1 * .40) / 10 = 6.7. People tend to force dumb ideas without understanding the economic cost of those decisions.

You might ask for a tour of your local power company, or maybe run for a seat on whatever council is regulating it. Learn what you can about what they are doing, what it costs, and why, and then form your opinions. It's too easy to blame some pie in the sky entity for the problems, unless you understand them and have some solutions in mind other than you need to do better.
 
I agree that 'stuff' happens. Good engineering practices can help a lot to mitigate the problems. For example the April 2011 tornado outage that took out the TVA lines in North Alabama and my home four days and six hours.

Before the massive outage, the local utility was somewhat casual in trimming trees too close to power lines. Afterwards, for years now, they have been aggressive to the point of making some local trees on the power liner side looking lopsided.

We still get a few 30-300 second outages through the year. But none of 30-360 minute outages we used to get. Based on my casual observation of the outage map, only the oldest neighborhoods have the longest outages.

Bob Wilson
 
Keith Smith said:
A million reasons for localized power outages, from vegetation, to weather, to vandalism, to accidents. I didn't consider it piss-poor engineering when the transfer truck backed over the transformer and took out a big chunk of downtown where I was working. We of course had a genny and UPS's for the computer rooms.

It's always fun to blame city hall, but you also must remember you are city hall. Most states set their rates via some sort of state regulated entity, and you voted those people into office. The biggest problem is everyone wants to play do-gooder, and put up solar and windmills, sacrificing the other infrastructure that supports current needs and growth so as not to raise the price of the power. What ends up happening, is the poco ends up paying more to fix problems created by lack of upgrade and maintenance they skipped to keep the rates down. Add in a little graft around the emergency fixups, and pretty soon you are paying California rates for your power. Good decisions all around there.

Many years back my friend was the CFD for Boulder City NV. They had a sweet deal, they paid 0.03/kwh for power in the city. They decided they would put in Solar, the townfolk decided they wanted to make sure they were using the solar power which, at the time, was around 0.40/kwh. So he asked the town council, if they wanted to double, or quadruple the bill for the townfolk. After looking at the puzzled expressions, he explained: If they blended in 10% of the solar cost locally the users cost per KWH would go from .03 to 6.7. But it can't be that much? (9*.03 + 1 * .40) / 10 = 6.7. People tend to force dumb ideas without understanding the economic cost of those decisions.

You might ask for a tour of your local power company, or maybe run for a seat on whatever council is regulating it. Learn what you can about what they are doing, did they use ev charger adapter for all EVs, what it costs, and why, and then form your opinions. It's too easy to blame some pie in the sky entity for the problems, unless you understand them and have some solutions in mind other than you need to do better.
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You’ve made a solid point it’s rarely one simple reason behind widespread or repeated outages, and too often we underestimate the complexity behind power generation, distribution, and regulatory economics. Vegetation, weather, accidents, even deferred maintenance all stack up over time. But what really hit home was your mention of public accountability. It's easy to point fingers at utilities or governing bodies, but ultimately, many of these decisions trace back to local policy and public will often driven more by idealism than grounded analysis.

The example from Boulder City is a perfect illustration of the disconnect between environmental aspirations and economic realities. People want clean energy, but few truly understand the costs behind scaling it, let alone integrating it reliably into an aging grid. Throw in the fact that many POCOs are locked into long-term supply contracts, and adding renewables without a solid transition plan often results in exactly what you said: higher costs, underfunded maintenance, and then surprise outages.

Puerto Rico is a textbook case of all of the above old infrastructure, vulnerable geography, weak oversight, and political and financial instability. The push for renewables there makes sense on paper (abundant sun, wind), but without grid modernization, storage solutions, and reliable policy frameworks, it's a tough road. The military bases and critical facilities probably have their own contingency setups they almost have to but for the average household, energy independence is still more of a luxury than a default.

You're absolutely right: If we really want things to change, we can't just yell from the sidelines. We need to show up to utility board meetings, public hearings, or even ballots. At the very least, understand the numbers before demanding change. Because as your friend in Boulder showed, well-intentioned ideas without economic grounding can do more harm than good.
 
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First, welcome to our niche of the Internet. You've also stumbled across two of us who went "private solar."

In my case, Elon got distracted so I sold my TSLA stock. For tax coverage, I used the former TSLA investment to buy a solar roof and now get about a $100/month electric bill savings versus the former TSLA capital that had no dividends. I already have a BEV and backup PHEV so now my miles around town are free.

I would suggest renewables are not "either/or" but rather there are degrees. For example, I could have gone with solar just for EV charging and gotten ~2/3ds of my savings:
example_savings.webp
($0.17/kWh after a recent rate increase.) But I had the money and went with a whole house solution.

Got my "Permit to Operate" April 30 and learning how to adjust my loads and life-style to minimize buying grid power. My goal is using all the kWh for my purposes although any excess, <10%, has been dumped into the grid.

The Australians have been doing some interesting work in "virtual powerplants" that ties the local solar panels into a more efficient whole system. So I see a future in a similar approach in my neighborhood. Initially, individual systems that the utility company (if they want to stay in business) by providing the other glue logic that everyone benefits from.

Bob Wilson
 
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I also went solar because of my EV. Power here is pretty inexpensive off-peak, it was more of an engineering puzzle for me. My dream would be completely off-grid and 100% electric. It definitely can be done with today's tech.
 
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