So let’s add the USA to the ever-lengthening list of loadshedders and near misses:
Dear old SA
Switzerland
UK
China (including Shanghai)
Australia
Finland
USA
We’re currently (no pun intended) in the middle of a 4 day Stage 2 sesh here, due to breakdowns at six different power stations (including Koeberg), and a late return to service for another unit at another power station.
I found a network of webcams in California (and up the rest of the west coast of the US) which are used for checking out wildfires. You can view them anytime, even when there aren’t wildfires. They look out right across a lot of the countryside and so you can see for miles and miles.
However, when I looked at them yesterday, there were some wildfires. (Spoiler: that’s actually why I was looking at them.) And one of them wasn’t miles and miles away.
One of them was actually very close to one of the cameras:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the feed from this camera just north of Santa Cruz had gone down. This was the last image that was seen from it – some 6 hours before I visited the site.
But if the fire crews were wondering where they needed to be to fight the fires, well… it really is right here.
(That’s… er… here.)