Pacific Power’s Vine Street substation in Albany, photographed one day in October 2022.
Pacific Power last week gave us a foretaste of what’s in store in coming years if Oregon continues its drive to make electricity more expensive and the power supply less reliable.
The utility sent customers in Albany and elsewhere an emailed notice as the nighttime temperature was forecast to dip below freezing “over the weekend and into Martin Luther King Jr. Day.”
The company said the advice was intended to help customers “to conserve energy to help keep bills low.”
One reason the price of electricity has shot up in the last couple of years is that Pacific Power is working to comply with the Oregon “Climate Protection Program.” The goal of the program is to phase out energy production from coal and gas and to rely on renewable sources instead.
This requires enormous investments in not just new solar and wind-powered energy plants but also in transmission lines, not to mention securing backup sources for the times that renewables are not available.
If this process is continued and eventually completed, electric bills will have to keep rising faster than inflation.
And when it gets cold in the winter and there’s no wind or sunlight — like on cold winter days and nights — the power companies may have to limit the the amount of demand on their systems. That means intentional blackouts.
I just came across an explanation of this in the United Kingdom, where something similar took place on Jan. 8. It’s an interview of an energy expert on a program called “Unherd,” and you can find it here.
In Oregon, consumers would like to be assured there’s plenty of capacity in the energy supply system for when we need it to keep from freezing to death, and that people can afford the price.
We don’t want to be told to turn the heat down when it’s cold. (hh)
Hey makes no sense some guy was just becoming president today – said we would all be great again was he talking about something else?
Turn the heat DOWN doesn’t mean you have to turn it off and freeze to death. My hubby and I have adapted to 65 during the day and 60 at night. Slippers, sweaters and blankets are always close by. Western Oregon winters are relatively mild so I think we can all be grateful for that. And grateful that officials are working to protect our fragile environment.
It’s called common sense. When the temp outside is really low, turn down the heat a few degrees so the furnace doesn’t work so hard and save money. If you “have money to burn”, go ahead and turn it up!
Oregon has more renewable power than probably all the other states but we continue to waste money on green energy even though Oregon is carbon neutral or better. The lying by Democrats that hydropower, the best renewable power source available, is not renewable power according to the State of Oregon is ludicrous.
I don’t think I got an e-mail from PP&L.
Unwelcome advice was the A-town city council making our power bills much more expensive by their downtown pet project. Um Hello!!!!!
Very untimely Hasso, MAGA(t)
“And when it gets cold in the winter and there’s no wind or sunlight — like on cold winter days and nights — the power companies may have to limit the the amount of demand on their systems. That means intentional blackouts.”
With the digital power meters, the Electric Company/Government has the ability to decide exactly “who” gets intentionally blacked out.
Just exactly “what” is this so called “backup”? Ginormous banks of toxic batteries? HOW many DAYS “backup” will they provide in case of natural disaster such as a forest fire, wind storm or ??? Windstorms can down power lines that “charge” you backup. Major fires can block out a lot of solar.
As kind of a hobby, I monitor the solar output at the Corvallis airport. https://www.weather.gov/wrh/timeseries?site=CRVO
I seen nice summer days where apparently, the Air National Guard was having exercises and there were a lot more contrails in the sky than usual. The solar output was noticeably decreased over similar days before/after. Why don’t they ban contrails?
I heat (and cool) my home electrically with solar power. I keep it at 72 year round.
“And when it gets cold in the winter and there’s no wind or sunlight — like on cold winter days and nights — the power companies may have to limit the the amount of demand on their systems. That means intentional blackouts.”
Until a bunch of folks freeze to death and then what? Or someone brings their grill inside or uses a propane heater and someone dies.