Libtards Close Last Power Plant in San Francisco

Of course, they have no idea where they will get more energy in a crisis situation.  Stupid is as stupid does:

Contentious plant closure gets final approval
Heather Knight,John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 – SF Chronicle

San Francisco’s last polluting power plant will be shuttered by the end of this year – ending a decade of debate over what to do with the Mirant Corp.’s Potrero Hill plant, one of the dirtiest in California.

City officials and the plant’s owners reached an agreement last summer to shutter the 40-year-old fossil fuel plant on the southeastern waterfront. But the California Independent System Operator – charged with ensuring enough energy would be produced without the Mirant plant – didn’t sign off on the closure until Tuesday.

“Five years ago, San Francisco had two of the most polluting power plants in California,” Mayor Gavin Newsom said, referring to Mirant and the Hunters Point plant that closed in 2006. “At the end of this year, we will have no polluting power plants in this city.”

Yakout Mansour, president and CEO of Cal-ISO, which oversees the reliability of California’s electric grid, sent a letter to Newsom on Tuesday stating the organization is convinced the city will have enough energy without Mirant once transmission projects, including a new transbay cable undergoing testing and transmission improvements being made by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., come online.

Newsom said he expects Mirant to be closed by November.

Still, Mansour cautioned in his letter that eliminating a plant always poses concerns over blackouts, especially in the case of “natural emergencies.” Newsom said the city will be no worse off following an earthquake or other natural disaster with the new transmission projects coming online.

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Yeah.  Here’s the stupidity in that thinking:  About 5 to 10 percent of the energy produced by a power plant is wasted in the distribution of electricity via the power grid—and that is just for local power plants.  Distant power stations have losses as high as 40 percent.

In other words, the more wire needed to pump all that electricity through, the higher the resistance will be on those lines.  The higher the resistance, the more energy which is wasted as it gets converted into heat while trying to push through all that resistive wire.

San Francisco will now be receiving their electricity from power plants miles away from the city.  That means ALL their power will come from long runs of transmission lines.  Which, ultimately,  means that the power plants will waste more energy trying to supply San Francisco’s electrical needs.  More energy wasted equals more pollutants dumped into the atmosphere…

Way to go, San Francisco!

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