Aren’t most of the fancy office buildings HVAC off with everyone WFH? I bet not, but maybe there’s a opportunity there.
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I think you can likely add the 3 areas without obvious immediate weather issues as “Holy fuckballs, when will the blizzards stop?!?!” You may wish to sub ‘rain’ for ‘blizzards’ for the PNW.
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California does have a huge amount of public utility solar, but not as much local solar on people’s houses as we should have. As @NukeML said, the laws are pretty broken right now such that the incentives are all wrong. I can have solar on my house, sure, but either I shell out $20k to install panels with no option to sell power back to the grid (thus taking 40 years for those panels to pay for themselves in efficiency alone) or I have to let one of the many huckster solar companies “lease” my roof and install panels I have no control over. They are not responsible for any leaks caused by their hamfisted installation, they keep the profit from the excess power generated, I can never remove the panels without breaking their contract, and it makes my house impossible to sell because people don’t want to buy into some deal with a solar company that I made.
The Edison and PG&E power companies successfully lobbied to kill net metering by private individuals in California, and that was the death of rooftop solar getting real traction here.
US institutions may be corrupted by corporations beyond repair.
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What is your major malfunction, California? Are you a third world state?
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After United Illuminating’s bungled response in CT to Hurricane Isaias I finally broke down and bought a 7000 watt generator. We were only without power for four days (and put back online by a crew out of Buffalo who saw a downed line and fixed it, without a ticket, because they aren’t idiots). Our neighbors had power and let us run extension cords. The generator means I don’t need to stress about spoiled food, I can distract myself and the family with the TV and DVD player, and UI can take their stupid time restoring their stupid grid.
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I was ignorant of just how broken the home solar scene in most of the US is…
This video seemed to be a good overview, couched in a review of Tesla’s attempted solutions: https://youtu.be/a7MHaGeVrZA
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Yeah, up there with “thunder snow” and the like - terms which seem to have come from nowhere.
Good name for an exotic dancer though?
(Thunder Snow, not so much…)
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This is one thing that I never understood about us whiny New Englanders. It gets below freezing for three days in a row, and people complain that we’re living in a tundra. More than six inches of snow? Apocalypse!
Try living in Wisconsin for a January. Then you get to complain. Until then suck it up, put on your long johns, and grab a shovel or blower. Then be thankful that it’s not below zero F for a week and you didn’t just get 2 feet of snow 
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Three linked questions:
Aren’t rolling yearly blackouts a Third World (“Shithole Countries”) problem?
Why isn’t electric power, water and sewer considered a Public Utility in the US?
Governments are supposed to provide the basics for their citizens, aren’t they?
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We’ve always had thunder snow in Boston MA. It’s just that the term wasn’t popularized until this broadcast
Did California ever do anything about the power lines that started those forest fires last year? This is basically trying to fix the same thing isn’t it?
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We’ve been raking the sh*t out of anything that stands still long enough. /s
Our long annual dry season (months with no rain), climate change, this heat wave, and yesterday’s lightning storms are a nasty combination. Many of the deadly fires took place during high wind events, too. Not much we residents can do, except hope that this year our power suppliers have eyes on their equipment and shut down lines for safety.
Rolling blackouts suck, but burning whole towns off the map sucks far more.
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HVAC should be running to keep humidity low otherwise there’s a risk of mold and other poor indoor conditions that would more than offset the savings.
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Also, many offices host local servers, all of which need to be kept cool.
I try to avoid using AC whenever possible, typically I used it maybe 3 times per summer. Of course I live in New England not Cali or the arid Southwest.
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Open the windo… oh, right, you can’t. Seems like an opportunity. Also, server rooms are typically much cooler, (ever put on the parka to execute tests?- I have) and if you’re running a server under your desk, god help you.
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In some places, it is. Here in LA, the Department of Water and Power (DWP) and the Department of Public Works (DPW) (which includes LA Sanitation) are municipally-owned utilities. The DWP is a major revenue source for the City, but its primary priorities are making sure its citizens have access to reasonably-priced, reliable supplies.
We haven’t had any rolling blackouts this year, and didn’t have any during the Great Privatization Debacle - in fact, we endured extra air pollution to run our local fossil-fuel plants full time, so we could export our surplus to other areas with shortages.
The whole idea of municipally-owned non-profit utilities was a major push by Progressive reformers back in the early 20thC.
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