UC-Berkeley Campus Asked to Reduce Power Usage Between 3 and 8 PM
“Please turn off lights, computers and other equipment, close fume hoods, etc. before you leave.”
California is currently experiencing a power crisis, which is even affecting college campuses.
Berkeley News reports:
Campus asked to reduce power usage from 3-8 p.m.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Alivisatos, Vice Chancellor for Administration Marc Fisher and Vice Chancellor for Research Randy Katz sent the following message to faculty, staff, postdocs and graduate students on Wednesday:
In the interest of providing adequate power to the state’s electrical grid, Governor Newsom has asked everyone across the state to take steps to conserve energy. Specifically, the campus has been asked to reduce our power consumption as much as possible from 3-8 pm for the next few days or as long as the warm weather conditions persist. Note: this is not a power outage.
We ask that you make plans to leave campus by 3 pm today, and by 3 pm each day for the rest of the week to assist the campus in complying with this request. Please turn off lights, computers and other equipment, close fume hoods, etc. before you leave.
For those who must come to campus for research or instructional preparation, please consider starting your work day earlier so you can be off campus from 3-8 pm each day. Those of you who can work remotely should do so for the next few days, even if you have been approved to be on campus. If you control on-campus equipment, servers, etc., remotely, please plan to reduce use of these resources during the 3-8 pm window as well.
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Comments
Temporary. To deal with a transient surge in demand. Just like those stupid masks.
Welcome to California!
You can have green energy or reliable energy or a mixture of the two, as long as the reliable energy can cover the load on a windless night. California has gradually eliminated its carbon-free, reliable nuclear plants, and the fossil fuel plants can’t keep up.
Californians elected people who made the wrong choices. As a result, they may freeze (or roast) in the dark.
Will it change how they vote? Not likely.
Which means you have to build enough reliable energy capacity to cover 100% of demand, because one day you’re going to need it. But that means the green capacity you build on top of that is a pure waste.
You can bet the plant operations people have been told to cut back on meeting cooling load. It’s amazing how much can be saved by optimizing a chiller plant. Been there, done that, used the software.
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