California electrical shortage audio

Djjd - Bravo, well said. It's also worth noting that over population is the underlying cause. As the population steadily rises so will the shortages.

I live in Los Angeles and find it intersting that our public untility (DWP) has excess power and hasn't had a rate hike in more than eight years. Fewer fingers in the pie? Less raping and pillaging? Being in an all electric building, with dreaded radiant heat, this doesn't stop me from getting outragious bills during the "cold" winter months here. ;~)

As a resident of LA, I think that we all have a responsibility to help in the energy crisis here. I agree with most of the sound related posts that my amps sound harsh at first turn-on and about 95% after around an hour warm up. They still get a little better over a day or so. I really like how my system sounds after a long warm up.
That said, I am running Aleph 2 monos and at 600w/ hr just being turned on, that's not only a heap of change, but is a little irresponsible in light of the current (no pun intended) situation.
As far as the political tangent on this thread, I think one of our weaknesses as Americans is we often look to blame (or lynch) someone else for causing just about any problem. Everyone who consumes enregy is at least a part of the problem.
If we spent half as much energy trying to fix, or better yet prevent problems, rather than finding scapegoats, we'd be a hell of a lot better off. Responsibility is what helped make America great. I wish we all would accept a little more nowadays.
Now back to the thread from a pure audio sound/safety standpoint. Most of my equipment has built in protection. I also run pretty good conditioning/ surge protection on the lines. However, I have had several days in the last 5 mos where I return home and my preamp (Muse 3) is, for lack of a better word, "shorted". The LED lights are incorrect and I need to unplug and replug it to get it to work again. I also had a Faroudja DV-1000 fry one night this fall in spite of line conditioning. Fortunately, it was repaired for only a couple hundred bucks. My VCR's and clocks were reset at these times too, so it's wasn't isolated to the components. For these reasons, I turn my stuff off most of the time.
I turn off the amps due to the electricity shortage. I do admit that I justified leaving them on over the "cold" LA winter as they were serving as heaters for my home. (Pretty good rationalization anyway). Peace,

Todd

Tsquared... get some tubes. Better sound *and* good karma to boot ;~). I'm cooking Paella on an open wood fire this weekend just to show that we don't need to be slaves to "the man".

Chriskh - Thanks for toning down the rhetoric and for agreeing to do some research on the issue of oil & gas production in the U.S. Since you seemed skeptical of my post concerning the high level of drilling activity that's going on in the United States, I thought I'd pass along some recently published figures on this subject.

A March 2001 report just released by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission states that there are now a total of 17,450 permits for coal-bed methane wells in the Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming alone. The breakdown on well development is as follows:

4,900 wells currently producing gas in this Basin,
9,600 new wells that have been drilled recently but are not yet producing,
2,950 active permits for other new wells that have not yet been drilled.

The Wyoming Oil & Gas Commission reports that an average of 40 permits for new wells are issused each day. These figures were also reported by the Casper Star Tribune newspaper (Wyoming's only state-wide newspaper) on April 11, 2001. You can request a copy of this paper at www.trib.com.

The Casper Star Tribune also cites a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) report estimating that the number of methane wells in Wyoming's Powder River Basin (an area encompassing roughly 13,500 square miles) could reach 51,000 wells by 2010 and 70,000 wells by 2060. This will result in an average of more than 5 gas wells on each square mile of land. No estimates were provided for the amount of roads, powerlines, pipelines, etc. that would be constructed to facilitate all these wells.

These figures reflect the drilling activity in only one basin in only one western state. Thus, my previous post was inaccurate -- there is significantly more drilling activity going on in Wyoming than I had suggested.

As for your doubts about how little public land is closed to oil & gas development, the Casper Star Tribune (April 15, 2001 issue) obtained the following figures from the BLM for public lands in Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado:

WY: 97.5% open, only 2.5% of public lands closed to mineral (i.e., oil & gas) leasing,
MT: 98% open, only 2% of public lands closed to mineral leasing,
CO: 96.5% open, only 3.5% of public lands closed to mineral leasing.

These figures are consistent with those I reported in my previous post. No estimate was given for how much of the "potential" oil and gas reserves under the small percentage of the lands with a "no-surface occupancy" (NSO) closure could be tapped from outside the areas using directional drilling technology. (In my estimation, virtually all the potential deposits under NSO areas can be accessed directionally without lifting surface restrictions needed to protect soils, streams, structures, camp grounds, cultural cites, wildlife habitat, etc.).

Moving on to the roadless policy you were concerned about, the Casper Star Tribune (4/15/01 issue) cites a U.S. Geological Survey report which calculated that the "roadless" lands in six states contain less than 0.6% of nation's natural gas deposits and an even smaller percentage of the nation's oil desposits. This is consistent with what was reported in my earlier post. No estimate was given by USGS or the Tribune for how much of this small amount of "potential" reserve could be extracted by directional drilling from along the boundaries of the roadless areas.

Here are a few other figures reported by the Casper Star Tribune (4/15/01 issue) you might find interesting:

The U.S. contains less than 3% of the world's known oil reserves (nearly all of which is currently accessible).

The Bush administration's budget cuts $200 million from federal renewable energy and efficiency programs, cuts 50% from geothermal technology programs, and cuts 54% from solar
energy programs.

The Bush administration's budget provides a $15 million increase in funding for BLM to expand oil and gas development on public lands in the western U.S.

Food for thought. Do with it what you will.