>>12682759the Australia break down was hilarious. They figured since solar and wind couldn't meet 24/7 demand that the simple answer was to make more so they could reach 100% daily demand.
Well that overloaded the system with too much power during the day sending surges frying a big chunk of their grid as it blasted past insufficient breaks. Then the night came as they were trying to get things back on line and found insufficient power from the solar and wind to help get things back up.
Apparently the solar and wind companies were more then happy to build far more solar and wind capacity then needed. And the government was happy to order more. But somehow the smart people were completely ignored when they highlighted that too much power during the day doesn't fix power deficiency at night without some kind of energy storage which they had very little of and shutdown many peaker plants as well.
Last I heard the government and companies were in a nasty law suit to see who was going to pay to fix the mess. If they just had a huge energy storage system they would be in a good position.
I would assume something similar is happening in California, on top of the painfully neglected energy grid that ids falling apart as they still haven't fixed the madness Enron put them in by doing something similar with virtual future energy trading. Turns out you can buy energy to power your city from future production, but stock traders aren't grid engineers.
