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Gas-Powered Lawn Equipment Will Soon Be Banned In Cali, a broad category that includes generators.

Despite its sometimes unfathomable attitudes, California's actions led to meaningful clean air standards, which among other things, caused the nation to increase mpg and decrease tailpipe emissions - to everyone's benefit.
I suspect a similar outcome may occur because of its integration of electric vehicles, renewable energy, distributed transmission and off-peak storage.
Whether we live to see it is another question altogether.
Almost everything "Governor Moonbeam" (Jerry Brown) predicted decades ago has come about - and we are still early in the tale of Climate Change meets the Population Bomb on the Road to Disinformation.
 
Texas-Mark said:
Common enough that they have a web site for rolling blackout schedules.
www.sce.com

Power Outage Awareness Map

Find the latest information on an electric outage in your area.
www.sce.com www.sce.com
Click to expand...

Yep. I know of a small community that Edison cut power to due to the power lines blowing into trees in high winds and starting fires. When they first started doing that 2 years ago, everyone dragged out their old generators and fired them up. 2 houses burned to the ground due to generator fires, several other fires damaging parts of homes, at least 6 people sent to the ER with CO poisoning and one elderly lady died.

The power goes out until the wind dies down. I have seen it out for just over 2 weeks.
 
Dude there is like 20 stickers of stick figure people cautioning not to run the generator in the babies room. I'm sorry but these are all operator error. If the generator was at a safe distance and the interlock properly installed all failures would be safe.

Like how I said proper and not permitted/inspected? Because a sheet metal interlock cover on the main breaker to feed the panel is 100% legal and safe but me backfeeding the panel with the main open is deadly, illegal, and starts an internet war. Yet they literally are the same thing and the first provides just as much potential failure as the second if the main breaker has a stuck contact.

Death is terrible but laws of stupidity dont care. If I had a dollar for every generator installed improperly, too close to a structure, or literally inside well I wouldn't have to work for a week then. It's not the generators fault.

Portables are not governed by the same code so nothing prevents some idiot from firing up the gennie and running it their garage.

I feel bad for California because a Bluetti isn't going to do much as a standby power system unless you are running just a fridge. You can't even begin to compare automatic home standby generator and a Bluetti as far as capability.

I'll also state that all the new equipment have cats, a good chunk of them are fuel injected, they all have charcoal canisters to trap evaporative emissions, and the fuel cans as we all know suck. So where is all the pollution coming from?
 
Porch said:
Yep. I know of a small community that Edison cut power to due to the power lines blowing into trees in high winds and starting fires. When they first started doing that 2 years ago, everyone dragged out their old generators and fired them up. 2 houses burned to the ground due to generator fires, several other fires damaging parts of homes, at least 6 people sent to the ER with CO poisoning and one elderly lady died.

The power goes out until the wind dies down. I have seen it out for just over 2 weeks.
Click to expand...
That is a blackout for safety.... not a rolling blackout for lack of generating capacity.
 
Affordable DC Generators said:
me backfeeding the panel with the main open is deadly, illegal, and starts an internet war
Click to expand...
If the main is open why is it illegal? Or deadly? Who are you yelling at?

I’m not interested in any of the war thing either! I got hit with a 64-bit encrypted packet once- just lucky it wasn’t 512 or 256
 
Texas-Mark said:
Common enough that they have a web site for rolling blackout schedules.
www.sce.com

Power Outage Awareness Map

Find the latest information on an electric outage in your area.
www.sce.com www.sce.com
Click to expand...
Yes CA actually has a plan and it has happened a couple times. Not to be confused with TX where there was no plan causing extended blackouts, people died of exposure, no water due to the municipal pumps shut down, hospitals evacuating. In CA they have a plan to prioritize hospitals, police, fire and municipal services for public safety. Still rather uncommon to go dark due to lack or generating capacity.
 
time2roll said:
Not to be confused with TX where there was no plan causing extended blackouts, people died of exposure, no water due to the municipal pumps shut down, hospitals evacuating.
Click to expand...

Ok, I actually live in TX. There was no plan for the fluke weather event we had, because it was just that - a fluke. No "reasonable" plan would have prevented it. Many of the issues were due to the "go green" people who forced some of this stuff on us. So the solar farms became covered with snow and frozen ice, the windmills becoming frozen, and a few other unfortunate coincidences happened (NG plants down for maintenance because we don"t normally have severe weather at that time of year). Sure there were a few deaths, just like there are every year in northern states in the winter. The event lasted a whole 3 days and then we were back in the 70s. The media exaggerated a lot of what happened.

I was without power for 3 days and got by with one 2kw inverter generator and a couple of indoor propane heaters. The genny was just to keep the fridge running, but I could have just as easily put that stuff outside. Sure, I learned a few lessons too, because all of my planning was for outage issues when it is 115 outside, not a fluke winter weather event.
 
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I'm not sure yet if text of the law bans sale of "gas" or "gasoline" engine powered equipment. Or some other wording.
An article said that this mobile equipment was on track to exceed the emissions of cars (must be talking about smog-producing emissions, not "carbon", this time), because cars have become so much cleaner. Certainly the smog checks I've seen for my cars have been clean.

Years ago, natural gas fired vehicles was an obvious solution to emissions (I assumed at the time issue was it that car engines wouldn't wear out fast enough on that fuel.)

Some small engine power equipment uses propane. That should handle the applications where battery powered isn't sufficient.
 
Hedges said:
Some small engine power equipment uses propane. That should handle the applications where battery powered isn't sufficient.
Click to expand...

Assuming they ok propane, I can foresee new generators being sold as "propane only", but easy enough to add a gas tank and run off of gas.
 
Yes the law appears to be specific to gasoline. Propane would just be a crutch moving toward batteries.
Reminds me of that old LEAF commercial with office equipment powered by little gasoline engines.
 
Texas-Mark said:
Ok, I actually live in TX. There was no plan for the fluke weather event we had, because it was just that - a fluke. No "reasonable" plan would have prevented it. Many of the issues were due to the "go green" people who forced some of this stuff on us. So the solar farms became covered with snow and frozen ice, the windmills becoming frozen, and a few other unfortunate coincidences happened (NG plants down for maintenance because we don"t normally have severe weather at that time of year). Sure there were a few deaths, just like there are every year in northern states in the winter. The event lasted a whole 3 days and then we were back in the 70s. The media exaggerated a lot of what happened.

I was without power for 3 days and got by with one 2kw inverter generator and a couple of indoor propane heaters. The genny was just to keep the fridge running, but I could have just as easily put that stuff outside. Sure, I learned a few lessons too, because all of my planning was for outage issues when it is 115 outside, not a fluke winter weather event.
Click to expand...
Actually, it's because Texas decided to be on their own and then decided it wasn't worth the money to design the power plants and wind farms to work in sub zero weather. They have windmills all over the world where it gets colder than Texas got. Texas just has a mis managed power system.

Federal regulators warned Texas 10 years earlier this could happen. Texas ignored them because they wanted to go on their own! Because they wanted to stay unregulated, they also had no tie ins to other states to import electricity. The "Go Green" people didn't do anything. Texas was on their own and made their own faulty decisions.

210 people died in Texas due to the power issues...but who counts deaths in texas these days LOL
 
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Texas' grid is mostly closed off from the rest of the country by choice in order to be exempt from a lot of federal regulation, FYI. I wouldn't say it's grid is mismanaged in general. In this case it was more that they are overly dependent on solar and wind and got caught without out sufficient base load generation capacity when they most needed it due to a confluence of events that combined about zero renewable generation with a gas shortage plus some ill-timed plant maintenance, plus high demand caused plants to automatically go offline after sustained low frequencies (< 59.4hz) over a period of time to prevent damage.

Holy run-on sentences, Batman!
 
Affordable DC Generators said:
I'll also state that all the new equipment have cats, a good chunk of them are fuel injected, they all have charcoal canisters to trap evaporative emissions, and the fuel cans as we all know suck. So where is all the pollution coming from?
Click to expand...

Small lawnmowers, weed wackers, blowers.

I went shopping for another weed wacker, asked about propane. Apparently one or two were made, hard to come by.
I wanted it to avoid gumming up carburetor from infrequent use.


I did pick up a 4-stroke power head, which I haven't put put to use.
I bought a cordless for about $150, but it couldn't cut my heavier grasses. Returned it and bought another for $250 which is doing pretty well.

www.rcpw.com

58V PAS Cordless Straight Shaft String Trimmer w/ 2Ah Battery & Charger

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www.rcpw.com www.rcpw.com
 
camelCase said:
Texas' grid is mostly closed off from the rest of the country by choice in order to be exempt from a lot of federal regulation, FYI. I wouldn't say it's grid is mismanaged in general. In this case it was more that they are overly dependent on solar and wind and got caught without out sufficient base load generation capacity when they most needed it due to a confluence of events that combined about zero renewable generation with a gas shortage plus some ill-timed plant maintenance, plus high demand caused plants to automatically go offline after sustained low frequencies (< 59.4hz) over a period of time to prevent damage.

Holy run-on sentences, Batman!
Click to expand...
Only a fifth of Texas's power comes from wind and solar. There natural gas power plants are basically what failed. They failed because they couldn't work in the cold weather because ERCOT didn't want them to have to meet the standards that the other 49 states have to live to.

Interesting article on the cost of the power outages:
www.dallasfed.org

Cost of Texas’ 2021 deep freeze justifies weatherization

Our analysis indicates winterizing for extreme winter weather events appears financially reasonable.
www.dallasfed.org www.dallasfed.org
 
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For the homeowner, it's not going to be a big deal. You can currently buy great battery powered leaf blowers, trimmers and lawn mowers. In fact I just bought two electric leaf blowers for two of my houses...they are great!

The problem is going to be for the lawn service people. They have to do many customers a day and they will have to have a huge assortment of batteries that will need to be charged overnight.
 
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