I recently signed up to get "Flex Alert" emails from PG&E which tells me about when power in my area in california is dangerously low and asks me to conserve extra on that day. You may have seen "Flex your Power" advertising around the bay area - this is what it's about.It turns out that last week, there were 2 such Flex Alert days. Thursday was the worst. There was actually a Stage 1 Emergency which meant that power usage was within 7% of available reserves. Flex Alert folks responded and actually shaved over a gigawatt off of the demand during peak time (note the difference between the grey and red lines around the peak). This gigawatt was enough to prevent the state from escalating the power emergency to Stage 2.
Interestingly, you can actually see a real-time graph of california's power usage plotted against reserves. The graph on the left is a small version of thursday's data. Check it out at the California Power System Status page and consider signing up for Flex Alerts.
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