HomeMy WebLinkAbout9/3/2019 Item 18, Moss
Purrington, Teresa
From:Robb Moss <rmoss@calpoly.edu>
Sent:Tuesday, September 3, 2019 2:24 PM
To:E-mail Council Website; Harmon, Heidi
Subject:re: electric homes and energy redundancy
Dear Heidi and City Council.
After following in the paper the discussions of a new policy for all electric in the home I'd like to add some thoughts that
may or may not have come up so far. I work in the area of risk and reliability of civil infrastructure systems; e.g., water
supply, energy supply, transportation systems, etc. I typically work on the regional or state scale, however these
discussions about going all electric have me concerned from an reliability point of view at the local scale.
I am all for energy efficiency and carbon neutral utilities, and strive for that in my personal life. The concept of
redundancy however is an important one when it comes to energy supply and related systems. The electric grid is our
"real-time" reservoir for electricity, except when there are blackouts or heat wave induced brownouts. Solar is a good
option, but because of current state law, residential solar systems are tied to the grid and therefore go down when the
grid is down. Home backup storage such as "power walls" are becoming more common but are limited to higher income
residence who have the means to purchase these.
Building redundancy into energy and infrastructure systems can be difficult and costly, but from a hazard perspective it
is often far cheaper to design a redundant system up front than after some type of system failure (usually at a ratio of
4:1 and upwards of 10:1). Take the concept of structural design for earthquake shaking, it is far more cost effective to
build a building to resist earthquake forces during initial design than to retrofit an already existing building after the
fact.
As you move towards encouraging more use of lower emissions energy, I ask that you look at the energy supply chain
and question how reliable that system is. The city, in partnering with other communities in Community Choice Energy,
has increased its leverage to influence how redundant and reliability our energy sources and transmission systems
are. Plan for the best but prepare for the worst, is a good way to vision out new energy and infrastructure systems
choices.
Best
--
Robb Eric S. Moss, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
Prof. Geotechnical, Earthquake, and Risk Engineering
Fulbright Specialist (Chile) 2017-2020
Dept. Civil and Environmental Engineering 13-217
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407-0353
office: 805.756.6427
web: http://ceenve.calpoly.edu/faculty/rmoss/
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