Blackouts averted again, but are they inevitable?

Grid operator believes our energy conservation efforts are paying off

Wednesday was the fourth day in a row California scraped by without another round of rolling blackouts. But experts warn that unless the grid sees major changes, power outages could become just another part of summer.

“I think there’s just going to be more in the future,” said Shon Hiatt, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business specializing in energy and utilities. “That seems to be the direction that we’re going.”

After initiating rolling blackouts Friday and Saturday for the first time since 2001, officials all week have been warning that California might run out of power again. The grid operator urged Californians to conserve power during peak hours and said those conservation efforts were all that was preventing additional rolling blackouts.

But Wednesday was windier and sunnier than it had been in the past, which generated more solar and wind power, said Steve Berberich, president and CEO of California Independent System Operator, or California ISO, which manages the state’s power grid. California also was able to import more power from neighboring states. And temperatures were expected to cool off slightly today and Friday.

“We do expect to be able to meet our obligations today with the conservation measures,” Berberich said Wednesday afternoon.

Shortly after 7 p.m., the ISO announced another much-welcomed all clear. The California ISO expects demand for power to drop the rest of the week as temperatures go down. But it is poised to pick back up Monday, potentially creating more supply problems.

“Monday still looks like a pretty high day, but we’ll address that as we get closer and have a better idea of the forecasts,” Berberich said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this week called for an investigation into what amounted to the biggest disruption of the state’s power grid in nearly two decades. He sent a letter to California ISO, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy

Commission demanding an explanation and solutions. On Wednesday, Berberich said the agencies would respond “in short order.”

The rolling blackouts the state saw Friday and Saturday stemmed largely from the state’s shift to clean energy and away from natural gas. During an extreme heat wave like the one this week, the solar power supply drops as the sun sets, but the weather remains hot — leading to a massive demand for power to run air-conditioning units that the grid can’t meet.

To fix the problem, the state can build more energy storage to tap into when the sun goes down — including huge warehouses full of batteries or pumped-storage reservoirs that convert excess energy into water power to be released at a later date, Hiatt said. California

also could invest in geothermal energy, he said. Or officials could change California policy and slow down the push to get natural gas plants offline, instead leaving them to augment solar power.

The trouble is, all of those solutions would take time to implement, Hiatt said. And asking Californians to conserve may not work forever. As school — albeit virtual this year — starts back up in the coming weeks, and more families return from vacations, energy use might climb, Hiatt said.

“If the heat is high, the air conditioner will be running notwithstanding, I believe, the calls to conserve energy,” he said.

Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at Stanford University focused on energy and climate, is optimistic California can figure out how to maintain

power reliability when the sun goes down.

“California is in the midst of a really dramatic transformation of its electricity system, and we’re learning things as we go along, and sometimes there will be mistakes,” he said. “And part of being committed to climate action is some degree of willingness to tolerate mistakes and learn from them and not repeat them.”

But the giant wildfires burning around Vacaville, in Napa and Santa Cruz counties and beyond also could complicate the state’s ability to provide power.

“They are not impacting us yet — stressing the word yet,” Berberich said Wednesday. “We often do have issues with fires burning under or over transmission lines in particular. But as I speak, we don’t have anything being threatened.”

Still, even absent rolling

blackouts, thousands of Bay Area residents were grappling with power outages caused by fires, heat and lightning.

On Tuesday night, PG&E turned off power to 107 Santa Clara County homes in the San Antonio Valley Road area, near Mount Hamilton, as a safety precaution while the SCU Lightning Complex fires raged nearby, according to PG&E spokeswoman Katie Allen.

In addition, that fire damaged more than 100 PG&E poles, and crews cannot access the area safely to make repairs.

In San Jose, PG&E has restored power to more than 70,000 customers since Friday, after the heat wave and weekend lightning strikes caused extensive system damage, Allen said. As of Wednesday afternoon, 104 customers remained without power because of the

heat, and PG&E expected power to be restored by 10 p.m.

Some residents reported being without power for days.

“We understand how troubling it is for customers to go without power for extended periods of time,” Allen wrote in an emailed statement. “We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate the customers’ patience as we work to safely restore power in the San Jose area.”

In Napa County, about 1,900 PG&E customers have lost power as a result of the LNU Lightning Complex fires raging in the area, said spokeswoman Deanna Contreras. Another 6,700 fire-related outages were reported in Solano and Yolo counties.