On Jan 4, 3:10*pm, (Doug Miller) wrote:
In article , DerbyDad03 wrote:

[snip of post that is entirely good points except this last]

I'd choose to live without my AC over the others. *Look at it this way
- the utilities already have the abilty to take areas off the grid if
they feel it is in the best interest of the "whole" - i.e. rolling
blackouts. Which would you prefer: A few hours at 80 degrees or a few
hours with no power at all? *I'll opt for the former.

Trouble is, that's probably not the tradeoff you face. The tradeoff probably
will look more like a few *days* at 80 degrees vs. a few hours with no power.
Not to say that you wouldn't still come down on the same side of the
decision... just pointing out that it's not likely to be a simple
hours-for-hours trade.

--
Regards,
* * * * Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.

Ya know, now that I've thought about it a bit, I wonder if it might
indeed be just a few hours at 80 degrees.

We'd have to crunch a lot of numbers, but here's my 30,000 foot view:

From what I have been able to gather, CA's rolling blackouts shed
about 550 MW from the grid with each segment they shut off. Each
outage lasts 60 - 90 minutes in each of the 14 segments. So all we
need to know if it is possible to shed 550 MW by setting back every
PCT in all 14 segments at once.

If the goal is to shed 550 MW during the peak periods and it could be
done across all 14 segments at one time, then each set back would only
last as long as the peak usage hours would be. Come to think of it, if
having everybody's AC set at 72 is the major cause of the peaks, then
the set back itself would ease the load and they might be able to
shorten the time of set back.

I'm not sure if that makes sense but it would be fun to noodle through
it a bit.