More evacuations as blazes explode
Outages: Efforts to curb energy use help avert blackouts again
California avoided another round of rolling blackouts Tuesday as power conservation efforts helped stave off an energy shortage while excessive heat continued to plague the state.
The California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state’s electric grid, declared a Stage 2 power emergency at about 2 p.m. and urged residents to conserve energy as much as possible.
But conservation measures and a boost in wind energy production helped prevent the state from reaching a Stage 3 emergency, when the grid managers direct utilities to impose rolling blackouts. The
system operator announced just before 8 p.m. that it had lifted the emergency status.
It was the second day in a row that homes, businesses and government agencies banded together to sharply curtail their electricity use, helping to prevent what would have been the third round of rotating outages since the heat wave started on Friday.
“It was stunning,” said Steve Berberich, the system operator’s CEO, of Monday’s conservation efforts.
The system operator, a normally undertheradar nonprofit organization, has taken center stage in recent days as California grapples with its most dire electricity shortage since 2001. But the system operator does not actually buy power itself or make electric companies do so. Those decisions are overseen by regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission. Berberich has said the commission failed to ensure the state had enough power on hot summer nights after solar power becomes largely unavailable.
President Trump characterized the energy crisis as a political problem in a tweet on Tuesday that said California Democrats had “intentionally implemented rolling blackouts — forcing Americans in the dark.”
Yet politics did not force grid managers to require rolling blackouts on Friday or Saturday, Berberich told reporters.
“There wasn’t any party affiliation or other kind of input into the decisions to shed (electricity) load on Friday and Saturday night,” he said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom appoints members to the governing board of the system operator, but he also pushed back on Trump’s diagnosis.
“Cal ISO is a federally regulated agency, and they’re the ones responsible for the orders to pull back on the load,” Newsom said Tuesday when asked about Trump’s remarks on Twitter.
California has endured severe heat before without experiencing energy shortages, most notably in July 2006, when the grid saw a record 50,270 megawatts of electric demand. No rolling blackouts happened then or when demand approached the record high again in 2017.
But an important factor in recent days has been the extent to which other Western U.S. states are also facing excessive heat, preventing California from relying on outofstate power imports to close its energy shortfall. Also, a number of coal plants throughout Western states have shuttered in recent years as the country tries to shift toward more climatefriendly energy sources.
Other factors shaping the current crisis have included problems with power plants tripping off and weather conditions limiting use of solar and wind power at times.
Still, Berberich has resisted any suggestion that renewable energy is to blame for the shortage. Instead, he has said California should invest in even more clean power infrastructure, including large numbers of batteries that can store solar power for use when the sun isn’t shining.
“We need to be more thoughtful about what the grid looks like now,” Berberich said. “The grid looks very differently than it looked 10 years ago.”
The utilities commission already has rules in place that account for the fact that solar production declines in the evening, but officials may adjust the regulations further in light of the current crisis. Commissioners have ordered 3,300 megawatts of new power to support the state’s grid, but it won’t be available for another year.
A spokeswoman for the commission has said the agency is still trying to understand how the recent shortage happened and promised a thorough investigation — as Newsom requested.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had initially expected rolling blackouts in its territory on Tuesday evening that would last for an estimated two hours. The company also released a search tool at pge.com/ rotatingoutages for residents to see if their address would be affected.
The heat wave may begin to abate Wednesday with a significant drop in temperatures arriving Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. An extreme heat warning remains in effect for the Bay Area through 9 p.m. Wednesday, but the thunderstorms that featured lightning bolts shooting into the dry hillsides, causing fires Sunday and Monday, are not expected to return.
Electric grid managers asked all Californians to conserve as much energy as possible between 3 and 10 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday. Residents can help by setting their air conditioners to 78 degrees, drawing shades, turning off unnecessary lights, unplugging electric devices and using major appliances only before 3 p.m. or after 10 p.m.