[ravensburg]

It is true that Fort Morgan gets a lot colder then Denver does. I have been up their hunting enough in the winter to know that it can be a whole lot colder down there. The problem is still that Denver is starting overrun itself on a couple of things. Fresh water being one of them, I can’t remember the last time that we did not have water restrictions in effect of some kind. People don’t realize this but in the Denver area we do not get a huge amount of snow in the winter and not a lot of rain in the summer it all comes from the snow melt in the spring. It comes down to this if we are shortages of natural gas I have to really wonder what is going on. We should be producing enough of the stuff that even with a couple of well heads down we should not be seeing this kind of a shortage. Denver however needs to come to terms with the long-term problems of huge amount of people that decided to move and live here. For every house that is built we need power, more natural gas, more water and most of what they are paving over to make the new suburbs are being made in the areas of what was once farm land. If we are not careful we will have one giant city and all the way up the Kansas boarder. The main problem is now people have an excuse as to why the power and gas went out oh it was just a simple problem wont happen again. They fail to realize just how over burdened our power and gas supply system has become. Not to long and rolling blackouts will be the norm as we are no longer able to keep up with the amount of growth that needs to happen to keep the system going full blown. It saddens me that people should be looking at the root causes of over consumption along with an ever-growing population that demands more and more resources. I really am going to hate to see this city and the world if we just keep adding more and more people without thinking of the consequences. I am getting of my soapbox now sorry for ranting.

[PeakOiler]

I used to live in Federal Heights, on the north side of Denver, and about a year ago I was up there visiting some friends and I spotted at least one resident in Northglen, if I recall correctly, that had two small wind turbines, solar thermal, and solar PV at their house. I suspect they have a fireplace or woodstove as well. But if a burn ban was in effect, as is often the case in Denver during the winter--you should see the "brown cloud" there--they probably couldn't use the woodstove.

Nevertheless, that family might be the envy of the neighborhood and the home a good model if rotating blackouts continue.

Distributed generation (small solar and wind) is the way to go if you can afford it.

[AmericanEmpire]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow can consumers be forced to go without power ?

[kmann]

I live outside of Denver and outside of Xcel service area, so I was not affected by the rolling blackouts. I can see an Xcel power plant from my back yard that burns natural gas. I'm thinking they don't have the pipeline capacity to supply both residential heating and the power plants. We've had record cold here for this time of year, minus teens for lows and single digit highs, for the last couple of days. It's been two years since we've had anything this cold. There is plenty of gas in storage in the Ft. Morgan plant, they were injecting in January.

[pb_2_au]

In the post today:

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_3529714

First paragraph:
Mechanical malfunctions, inaccurate weather forecasts and inadequate natural-gas supplies caused the rolling power outages that afflicted 325,000 customers of Xcel Energy on Saturday.

Later:
The gas shortage was exacerbated by an undetermined number of Rocky Mountain natural-gas wells whose pumping equipment froze, preventing additional deliveries.

[Leanan]

MarketWatch has a story about this, too.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hen the weather gets that cold, it can freeze wellheads -- the equipment that controls the flow of gas from the Colorado and Wyoming fields that Xcel power plants rely on to generate about half of the company's electricity. That's what happened Saturday.

[tsakach]

BUSH: "First of all, there's huge pressure on natural gas -- people in Colorado know what I'm talking about. We've been using a lot of natural gas for the generation of electricity. And we got to change that. Natural gas is important for manufacturing, it's important for fertilizers. But to use it for electricity is causing enormous pressure, because we're not getting enough natural gas produced."

"See, what's changed is the global supply for fossil fuels is outstripping the -- the global demand is outstripping the global supply, and so you're seeing a price of the feedstock of normal energy going up, and technology driving the price of alternatives down. And that's why this is a really interesting moment that we're going to see. It has changed a lot of thinking."

Remarks by President Bush at a Panel on Energy Conservation and Efficiency, Feb 21, 2006

[Bleep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://osuosl.org/news_folder/031306outage]March 13 '06 Outage (link)[/url]
This morning the OSL data center suffered a power outage with the generator eventually failing. All systems should be back up to normal as of 20:40 UTC.

[seahorse2]

I will add this post to the Olduvai Gorge thread

[NeoPeasant]

My peak oil plans take into account the likelyhood that rolling blackouts will become routine, with increasing frequency and duration as time goes on.

[lutherquick]

NeoPeasant
Well, rolling black outs will happen as you say...
however, injecting more liquidity of the US dollar will not help. The FED will pump more money, and hope this will make someone, anyone invent some new energy source... having black outs in some areas would motivate energy producers to move into said area and build new plants, so they think... but these energy producers know better, they aren't going to build if there is no energy to power it...
Realisticly, we will just see more and more of black outs... the market will force the consumer to buy generators, people will do silly things, and resources will be burned when people do things for confort and doing things to feel better...

The power companies will chose black out zones based on politics, and whatever creates more profits for them.
We will see choas and everyone will blame someone else. 10 years from now most of Americans still won't know about peak oil theory, but they will feel it....

[americandream]

Blackouts in black areas...excluding Condo of course.........hahahahaha!!!!!

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'B')lackouts in black areas...excluding Condo of course.........hahahahaha!!!!!

[americandream]

Affirmative action at work.........lol.

[Leanan]

Austin Hit With Rolling Blackouts

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Parts of Austin experienced power outages Monday afternoon due to rolling blackouts.

Austin Energy told KVUE News the rolling blackouts were put in place because of a very high demand for electricity.

The state's power grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT), released a statement and called it an emergency situation.

Officials say there was not enough power generation to serve the demand, thanks to unseasonably hot temperatures and power plants out for maintenance. Blackouts were ordered for areas across Texas.

Temperatures reached record highs for the second day in a row in Central Texas. The temperature at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA) reached 100 degrees by 5 p.m. The previous record, set in 1987, was 90 degrees. Temperatures across Central Texas were in the upper 90s and low 100s.

Temperatures were expected to reach record highs again on Tuesday.

Last month, energy usage was up six percent compared to March last year. So far in April, energy use is up 16 percent compared to last year.

[TexasEx2006]

It's wild, all of the TV news is covering it now. I don't know if it's tied to specific grids or what, but only certain providers are being effected, i.e. Centerpoint Rolling Blackouts, Reliant Full Service.

Any power gurus out there?

[Zardoz]

Will whoever is holding down the fast-forward button please lift their thumb off it and give us a god-damned break!?!?

Peak Oil in 2006, global warming scenarios unfolding decades earlier than expected, power outages popping up all over, resource wars staging worldwide, Peak Gas, Peak Uranium, Peak Metals, Peak Water, Peak Fish, etc., etc., etc.

This is getting ridiculous! How they hell are we going to make any sort of smooth transition at this crazy rate!?

And they shake their heads and chuckle at our doomerishness! Gosh, I wonder why we're all so grim-faced?

[ClassicSpiderman]

Welcome to my world... the ultimate fantasy roleplaying game !!!!!

[Lore]

Speaking of "Peak Fish", the latest issue of Mother Jones News:

Link

[BrownDog]

One of the traffic lights was out on the way home, though I only suspect that it is related. As you might guess, traffic was really backed up. Nobody was directing traffic, and I saw three near-accidents in just a few minutes.

It's a warm day, but it's going to get hotter in TX. This isn't good.