The Burlingame Voice

Going Solar: One year later check-up

I made the move to rooftop solar a little more than a year ago as described here.  There has been plenty of rumblings about the CPUC reducing the financial benefits, and thus the incentives, to people putting solar on their roofs, but the latest news appears to be some sort of compromise that could maintain the momentum in California.  The one-year point is my check-in to see how it's paying off.  Twelve months after going active is known as the frist "true-up".  Per PG&E, I generated 449 kWh more than I used this past year, i.e. I sent them back 449 kWh.  On a day-by-day basis, it is variable with the weather as I noted here.  What isn't variable is the direction of electricity rates in the state--they are headed up for a variety of reasons.

The next question is "how do I get paid for my "donation" to the grid?".  That turns out to be a bit more complicated since I have Peninsula Clean Energy between my meter and PG&E.  Recall we all got moved to this green non-profit and one would have to opt-out if one didn't want it.  It turns out my credits live with PCE and they do their payouts in April of each year by sending a check to anyone whose balance is more than $100.  I'm at about half of that now based on how the 449 kWh is spread across winter and summer, peak and off-peak pricing.  If the balance is less than a hundred bucks, it rolls over to the next year.

The bottom line appears to be you get to feel good about generating solar juice and if you use a good amount (e.g. perhaps you have a pool with filters and pumps running thru the day) you cover most of your usage costs.  There are still connection costs to be paid, but you probably won't see any windfall each year.

California exodus accelerates in 2022

A year ago, the exodus from our lovely state was news as we discussed here.  The trend has accelerated which should accelerate the review of the state's housing requirement numbers as noted here.  The odd thing about the faulty RHNA numbers is that no one wants to talk about them.  I have mentioned it to several electeds and a watchdog news organization and all I get is crickets.  As a city, try to ignore them and Rob Bonta will be all in your face, but question them and he's silent.  You would think when a state auditor says this about the calculations, someone would go "hold on":

“Overall, our audit determined that HCD does not ensure that its needs assessments are accurate and adequately supported. …This insufficient oversight and lack of support for its considerations risks eroding public confidence that HCD is informing local governments of the appropriate amount of housing they will need.”

If someone is saying "hold on" they are doing it quietly behind closed doors.  But this is what is occurring in California out in the open from the WSJ:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted this week that his state is poised to become the world’s fourth largest economy. Perhaps, thanks to Germany’s economic struggles, but a new Hoover Institution report documents an accelerating business flight from the Golden State.

The report by Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and Spectrum Location Solutions President Joseph Vranich finds that 352 companies moved their headquarters from California between 2018 and 2021. Twice as many businesses left last year (153) than in 2020 and 2019 and three times as many as in 2018. The top destinations: Texas (132), Tennessee (31), Nevada (25), Florida (24) and Arizona (21).

California’s high top marginal income-tax rate (13.3%) punishes small pass-through businesses that pay income taxes at the individual rate as well as managers in C-suites. Manufacturers get slammed by high electricity costs from the state’s climate policies. The Mercatus Center ranks California as the most highly regulated state in the U.S.

Human capital is also becoming more scarce. The report notes that California’s net out-migration to other states increased to 277,000 in 2021 from 34,000 in 2012. Over the last 10 years, California has lost 1.625 million residents to other states—more than the population of Philadelphia. Foreign migration has compensated, but less so in recent years.

Tally that up with the layoffs and hiring slowdowns being reported at the major firms in the Bay Area, and you could say my "confidence is eroded" in the RHNA numbers that drive all of the residential building being jammed down our throats.  And the electoral response?  Raise the top marginal tax rate some more (Prop. 30) under the guise of fighting wildfires and encouraging more electric cars--like we don't already have enough subsidies and browbeating for EVs. 

Shocking Electric Virtue Signaling in San Mateo

The early refrain about "reach codes" to force march people to use the fuel the masters want them to use regardless of the cost or hassle was that "it doesn't affect you, only new construction".  Well, toss that out in San Mateo as their virtue signaling extraordinaire city council just reached further into everyone's pocket.  And they did it with minimal public support.  From the Daily Journal piece

The ordinance addresses existing building construction through remodels. Panel upgrades in residential buildings will require capacity for future electrification, while all residential kitchen and laundry renovations in single-family homes must include outlet installation for future electric use. Residential buildings will be prohibited from fuel gas infrastructure extension for fire pits, grills and pools. When new air conditioning is installed or replaced in homes, heat pump air conditioning will be required. Heat pump water heaters are required during addition or alteration projects that include water heater replacement.

For electric vehicle charging stations, all homes must have a level two EV-ready space and a level one EV-ready space if a second space is provided. Residential and office buildings must also build up level two charging station capacity.

I hope the city council members get more than just a card at Christmas from the electricians' union.  The piece goes on to note "Questions about the financial impact remain...."    You bet they do.  It's not just the higher cost of the appliances or their availability, but also the direct labor costs and the "soft cost" of the homeowner having to project manage all of this.  Remember when you could call a plumber, ask for a new hot water heater and the only question was 40 gallon or 50?  And the whole job was done in 45 minutes?  No more.  The cost of the electricity alone is enough to bust the budget and all the virtue signalers point to is subsidies from PCE--like that is some sort of free money.

We allowed the camel's nose to slip under the tent in Burlingame back in 2020, but let's hope the rest of the animal stays in San Mateo.  It's also time to get into the generator business.

Banning Natural Gas: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I sort of get it.  You're just back from the long Labor Day weekend.  The news is slow unless you want to talk about the heat and blackouts.  So what to do as a Daily Journal reporter?  Curtis Driscoll pulled out his abacus and dashed off an article about the percentages of supporters who want to ban natural gas in San Mateo.  It's an impressive show of support!

Public sentiment is in favor of more stringent reach codes in San Mateo around new construction and home renovations to eliminate gas, with most speakers at an Aug. 30 meeting supporting the city’s potential updates.

Polling at the end of the meeting following discussions found the vast majority strongly supported stricter electric reach codes around home renovations, new construction and electric vehicle infrastructure. More than 80% strongly supported requiring heat pump water heater installation for projects, including a water heater replacement in homes, requiring new pools to use electric or solar heating, and prohibiting extending the use of gas fire pits, grills and water heating in residences.

Wow!  Four out of five dentists recommend it.  Go big on Green.  Save the planet now.  I guess the message is getting through to people.  But wait!

The poll had 25 respondents of the 35 people who attended the meeting.

Now hold on.  Depending on which data source used and which iteration of some data sources, like the US Census, San Mateo has between 102,200 and 105,674 residents.  You don't have to spend 30 years in market research like I did to know that somethin' ain't right.  Were the 25 respondents self-selected by attending in the first place?  Yup.  Were they all even from San Mateo?  Dunno, but knowing how these greenie flash mobs go, I'll bet maybe half were.  Were the votes visible to all?  Did the 10 people who did not respond feel pressure to support the natural gas ban, but chose to abstain because they don't?  Good bet.  So the headline should read "Will apathy allow climate fanatics to load new costs on homeowners?"  With the meeting in question taking place virtually on Aug. 30, that is closer to the true story.

If you learned nothing from this week's events, it is that putting all of your household energy eggs in one basket is unwise.

Here is some additional information to buttress the argument about dual-sourcing your energy needs:

Birds, squirrels, balloons, Oh My.

Solar variability: A tale of two days in B'game

I told you about my "going solar" a year ago here.  So far, the system has been trouble-free and good amounts of juice are flowing back to PG&E.  But here in B'game we are feeling the trailing effects of Tropical Storm Frank from down south and have had a few cloudy, muggy days this week.  That got me curious as to how my solar system was responding.  But first, let's look at Calmatters.org for the latest electricity news from Sacramento.  On June 27, Calmatters reported that

The expansive energy bill that so angered clean-energy advocates and local officials — for its capitulation to short-term reliance on fossil-fuel and its closed-door negotiations — won lukewarm passage in California’s Legislature late Wednesday and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom today.

Republican members railed about being shut out of brokering the details of the plan that would manage California’s fragile electricity grid during summer power drains. Democrats saw the bill’s reliance on dirty energy sources to prop up power generation as a backward step.  During prolonged and pointed debate, the legislation was characterized as “lousy” and “crappy” — and those were the legislators who supported it.

“This was a crappy trailer bill that was dumped on us Sunday night,” complained Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat. “This was a rushed, unvetted fossil-fuel heavy response.”  “It’s a lousy bill,” said Hayward Democratic Assemblymember Bill Quirk, “but it’s the best hope we have for keeping the lights on.”

You can click through to read the rest of the gnashing of teeth, but the bottom line for me was delivered by a Wall Street Journal piece titled "America's New Energy Crisis:  Fossil fuel plants are closing faster than green alternatives can replace them."  There is total (peak) capacity, baseload capacity, time of day needs, etc. but when push comes to shove, how do the rooftop panels right here in B'game behave?  The Enphase system app conveniently does a year-over-year comparison, so we now know that a monsoony, cloudy day will drop solar energy production by 44.7%.  Almost cut by half.  It's gonna be hard to "keep the lights on" with that kind of green variability.  Looks like Newsom did something right for a change. 

             THIS YEAR                                                          LAST YEAR

Earthquake reminder from BNN

On June 29th the Burlingame Neighborhood Network (BNN) sponsored a webinar about the omnipresent threat of an earthquake here in B'game.  Tom Brocher, former Director of the Earthquake Science Center at USGS was the presenter and made many key points that serve as a reminder to Be Prepared.  You can find the whole pitch on the Burlingamenetwork.org website titled "It Can Happen Here".  I'll just give a couple of teasers:

Historically, we had the '06 quake of 7.8 that lasted 45 seconds, then Loma Prieta in '89 at 6.9 (which was only 10% of the '06--remember it's a logarithmic scale) and '14 at 6.0 centered in Napa.  Over the next 30 years we have a 22% chance of a big one on the San Andreas fault.

When, not if, we have a big one it could take at least 3 days for any sort of real help to arrive given roadbeds may subside differentially, landslides will happen on steeper slopes and over the following 3 to 4 days we could see many additional pipes breaking (i.e. gas, water and sewer) as movement settles.

There were only about 40 people on the webcast, so please go watch the video.

Lessons from Stanford: Get a Generator

As Santayana is credited with saying “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”   So let's learn from Stanford's "100% Green energy" experiment and the impact the nearby Emerald Hills fire has had on the campus.  With new construction happening all over Buildingame that must be all-electric because we have a "reach code", Santayana is in play here.  The bottom line is many B'gamers will be reaching for back-up generators.  The Chronicle is chronicling the mess down on the Farm:

In normal times, Stanford powers its campus with 100% renewable energy — a milestone it achieved this year. Most of it is solar power.  But only a small portion of the solar — less than 10%, according to Stanford civil and environmental engineering Professor Mark Jacobson — is on campus, on building roofs. The rest comes from two massive solar plants in Kern and Kings counties.  Because the power is not produced right on campus, Stanford relies on the state power grid to transport the electricity.

Stanford has been able to turn on some power. It’s using a few hundred diesel generators for key services, Jacobson said.

Wow.  I bet every Home Depot in the Bay Area is sold out of Hondas and Generacs.  That has to be really good for the environment, but there's more

Fixing a transmission line is “delicate work,” noted Michael Wara, an energy expert with Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “The standards are very precise for how things have to be done, so it takes time.”  Wara said he would have been even more concerned had damage to the PG&E substation on the edge of the fire occurred, since substation parts can be hard to replace.

Translation:  If a substation is badly damaged, expect it to be down for weeks to months.  But how will we get the horse back in front of the cart?

Wara said that the era of wildfires shows the importance of new thinking about the grid — especially how to get power to somewhere via multiple routes, and also self-sufficiency, though that can be expensive.  Jacobson said that the prolonged outage shows the need for more batteries to store power — and microgrids that can stay powered using the batteries when the main grid is not functioning.

This week Elon Musk was blunt about Tesla's battery problems as they transition from the 2170 lithium-ion battery cells to the new 4680 cells and different packaging.  That is with billions of dollars per month on the line, so don't expect the less-in-demand microgrid batteries to be fast-tracked through design, manufacture, deployment to utilities and finally energized.  I figure we are on at least a ten-year forced march through unreliable grid performance; if PG&E doesn't go bankrupt first.  But at least the Stanford students got a stipend

“Emergency Funds available! Resident students who have been impacted by the power outage may apply for support,” a tweet from Stanford’s vice provost for graduate education said. “$100 stipends will be provided to help with expenses related to food spoilage and eating out.”

Who will issue the B'gamers' stipends?  Those of us with grandfathered gas ranges and barbeques can cook the meat and seafood before it spoils.  C'mon over.

7/3  Update:  Who'd a thunk it?  The Examiner accepted an advertisement for a stinky, polluting, global warming generator.  You get a 7 year warranty by which time they will be illegal.

Worrying About Wildfire (Up the Hill)

Yesterday was the longest day of the year and it was especially long if you lived in the Emerald Hills section of Redwood City or the surrounding parts of Woodside.  In addition to the County text alert, I got a couple of texts from friends who were under evacuation orders that didn't last too long, but according to the DJ piece, the fire was not contained last night:

The seven-alarm Edgewood Fire in the hills of San Mateo County is at 25 acres and was not contained as of Tuesday evening, according to a spokesperson for Cal Fire.  There was one injury to a firefighter and no structures were damaged. A Pacific Gas and Electric substation was threatened and had units on it to ensure fire stayed away from it, Cal Fire CZU Deputy Chief Jonathan Cox said.  Large swaths of San Mateo County were out of power due to a downed PG&E transmission line, the utility said.

I've been worrying about this for sometime as I learn more about woodland management from my experience in Tahoe.  As a member of an HOA in Tahoe, we have put a good amount of time, effort and money into carving out a buffer zone.  Then I drive up Chateau Dr. or Black Mountain Rd in H'borough and I wonder what the Town of H'Borough is doing about all that fuel laying around on the ground.  It's pretty much everywhere you look.  Are we just one lightning strike or foolish act (or crazy arsonist) away from a real problem here "down the hill"?  It sure feels like it.

Download Emerald Hills fire_062122

This is a bit of video from the television coverage of the fire last night.  We will see if the link works.

Plug-in the Numbers on Plug-in Cars

I like finding bits of real insight that spring from real data and some analysis that puts it all in context.  Some other tidbits from the last year are here.  The Gavinor is bound and determined to disallow gas-powered car sales in California in 12 years.  Executive order directs state to require that, by 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles.  Twelve years may or may not be a long time for battery technology evolution.  It's physics, chemistry, metallurgy and economics after all.  In the meantime, this letter to the Wall Street Journal should open some eyes in the Gavinor's office

In “The Electric-Vehicle Unicorn Crash” (op-ed, May 20), Allysia Finley mentions that 434,879 EVs were sold in the U.S. last year. This represents a mere 2.88% of the 15.1 million vehicles sold here in 2021.

Global lithium-mine production reached a record high of 100,000 metric tons last year, 65% of which is used in EV-battery construction. (The other 44% is used in lubricants, cellphones, etc). The Electrek news site estimates that the Tesla Model S uses 63 kilograms (138 pounds) of lithium per EV, which means that if Tesla used every available pound of world-wide lithium for Model S battery construction, it could produce only 1,040,000 Model S EVs a year. Granted, the Model S is a top-end product that requires more lithium than smaller EVs, but the point is simple: Neoliberals who want to replace the internal combustion engine-powered car with EVs are living in a fantasy world.

To make matters worse, the U.S. currently has only one large-scale, active lithium mine, in Nevada, with two more proposed mines nearby. But the same kind of environmentally woke folks who demand a move to an all-EV fleet are holding up the opening of those two mines in court.  Unfortunately, the happy talk that defines the modern Democratic Party also prevails in the EV industry.

Russ Andrews

Aspen, Colo.

1.04M cars is about 7% of 15.1M cars.  That's 93% away from 100% for those following at home.  And that uses world-wide production just for cars, never mind Tesla Powerwalls for homes or the giant batteries that may someday bring some stability to our summertime electric grids.  Newsom better hope for some electrifying innovation soon.  Mining stocks are looking better every day. 

It's time for a new Attorney General

I was wrong again.  I thought when the last Attorney General, Becerra, got bumped up to HHS Secretary things would improve.  Similarly, I thought the same when the one before that got bumped up.  But I was wrong.  The Newsom-appointed Rob Bonta is as bad or worse than the last two AGs.  Just this week he decided to sue the US Postal Service for the crime of planning to buy, get this, 165,000 gas-powered vehicles.  I guess he is unaware that even with all of the credits, EVs are an expensive 4% of the market and a high-profile EV truck manufacturer (Rivian) just slipped its delivery schedule so much that its stock is down 70%.  Ford cut the value of its stake in Rivian by $5.4B.  Let's not forget the lithium and cobalt for batteries are expected to be in short (i.e. expensive) supply and mostly come from unfriendly parts of the world.  Is any EV company even planning a design that would work for the USPS?  Wanna bet the new GVs would be way better for the environment than the old ones on the road today?  Does Bonta even care? 

Also this week Bonta decided to investigate Exxon Mobil for misleading the public about the recyclability of plastic.  Wait, I thought the government was the source of the CRV fees that have apparently misled us all.  As soon as China stopped taking our used plastic, the whole model just broke down.  This isn't news as we saw last year here.  And the oil companies are responding by building recycling plants in the U.S.   Don't we want this?  Does Bonta have a clue about what it takes to rebuild the plastic recycling supply chain?  I doubt it.

And it's not like the things an AG is supposed to be doing in the state are going so well.  Harris left the office without putting a dent in the number of known criminals who still have guns but are not being searched out.  Becerra, same thing.  Did I miss the press release that Bonta is on the case and succeeding?  I doubt it.  Is he doing anything to prevent more known criminals from serving short sentences and shooting up Sacramento?  I missed that press conference, too.   It's time for a new Attorney General.  The primary election is on June 7.