Rolling blackouts hit California electricity grid for first time since 2001 energy crisis

Ongoing coverage: More blackouts? Here’s what Californians need to know for this weekend

• • •

California imposed its first rolling blackouts Friday evening since the energy crisis in 2001, as a scorching heat wave exhausted electricity supplies. The blackouts struck tens of thousands of households and included major swaths of El Dorado County.

The California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s power grid, declared a Stage 3 emergency alert around 6:30 p.m., the first time that had happened since 2001.

Spokeswoman Anne Gonzales said the grid managers were initially “shedding” about 500 megawatts of power, blacking out between 50,000 and 75,000 households.

However, PG&E alone at 8 p.m. had at least 120,000 homes and businesses in its territory without power due to the statewide emergency, according to the company’s outage logs.

The utility said the blackouts would generally last about an hour, and as many as 250,000 could be affected. But at 9 p.m., the statewide grid operator lifted the Stage 3 Alert, meaning no more rolling blackouts were being ordered, and power would be restored. PG&E officials said full restoration is expected by 11 p.m.

Among those areas that lost power were about 15,000 households in the El Dorado Hills-Cameron Park area and another 10,000 in Placerville. In the Bay Area, tens of thousands of customers were without power due to the rolling blackouts, including 8,200 in San Francisco, 17,000 in Sebastopol, 33,000 in San Mateo and 49,000 in San Rafael.

Also, San Diego Gas & Electric reported that at least 14,000 of its households lost power due to the rolling blackouts. Southern California Edison, which serves customers around Los Angeles and other south state counties, said at least 132,000 of its customers were affected by the emergency.

There were no significant outages in the Sacramento area. SMUD, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, isn’t part of the grid system served by the ISO and “we haven’t declared an emergency,” said spokeswoman Eileen Secor.

In all, the blackouts were the largest in the state since the massive “public safety power shutoffs” imposed by PG&E last October, when fierce winds increased wildfire risks. Those shutoffs blacked out hundreds of thousands of customers for several days at a time.

The extraordinary development capped a day in which the ISO constantly asked customers to reduce demand, while ordering suppliers to postpone schedule generator maintenance and bring other supplies into the market. “We’ve done everything we can on the supply side,” Gonzales said.

She said demand was easing off as the evening progressed, but as the sun began setting a crucial supply source started to wane: “The problem is, solar is also going down,” she said.

California has added a slew of new power generation since the energy crisis, including renewable energy sources, but the system was quickly overwhelmed by a heat wave that’s expected to extend into next week and top 110 degrees in the Sacramento Valley.

“We’ve been preparing for this for two days,” Gonzales said. “We’re 10 to 20 degrees above normal. This is all heat driven.” It was 105 degrees in Sacramento Friday evening.

The state endured several days of rolling blackouts in spring 2001. Part of the reason was genuine shortages in electricity. But investigators later discovered that the blackouts were also the result of unscrupulous energy traders from companies like Enron “gaming” a badly-flawed grid system and deliberately withholding electricity from California to extort higher prices.

Peak usage across the state was 46,802 megawatts at 4:55 p.m. Friday, according to the Independent System Operator. By 8:30 p.m., the load was about 42,150 megawatts, roughly what Thursday’s peak was (42,327).

This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Rolling blackouts hit California electricity grid for first time since 2001 energy crisis."