This is where the rolling blackouts happened in Northern California each night
Ongoing coverage: More blackouts? Here’s what Californians need to know for this weekend
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As the temperatures soared to extreme highs, California’s electricity supply couldn’t keep up for a second day Saturday, prompting the Independent System Operator in Folsom to institute rolling blackouts across the state.
The ISO isn’t the one who shuts off the power, but it does have the authority to order utilities to do so. And on Saturday night, at 6:28 p.m., Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric did just that.
Peak usage across the state was 44,957 megawatts at 5:36 p.m. Saturday, according to the Independent System Operator. That’s roughly 2,000 megawatts less than the peak on Friday.
Twenty minutes later, the ISO ended the Stage 3 emergency at 6:48 p.m., allowing utilities to reconnect customers. The outages were expected to affect approximately 220,000 PG&E customers in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Joaquin counties.
These are the areas of Central and Northern California were affected by the blackouts, according to PG&E officials and utility logs.
Stockton: 65,351
Live Oak-Santa Cruz: 49,931
Monterey: 18,638
Scotts Valley: 18,406
Seaside: 13,293
Aptos: 12,474
Carmel: 5,450
Livermore: 4,709
Salinas: 3,811
Carmel Valley Village: 3,408
Castroville: 3,355
Walnut Grove: 3,674
Watsonville: 6,093
FRIDAY’S BLACKOUTS
Between the three investor-owned utilities, roughly 350,000 homes and businesses were deliberately interrupted the first night to conserve energy — and estimated 750,000 Californians were affected by the first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years.
Peak usage across the state was 46,802 megawatts at 4:55 p.m. Friday, according to the Independent System Operator. Thursday’s peak was 42,327 megawatts.
These are the areas of Central and Northern California affected by the blackouts, according to PG&E officials and utility logs.
ALAMEDA COUNTY
Berkeley: 3,140 customers
EL DORADO COUNTY
El Dorado Hills: 21,543 customers
Shingle Springs: 14,871 customers
Diamond Springs: 10,877 customers
Placerville: 10,707 customers
Camino: 8,295 customers
Pollock Pines: 6,290 customers
KERN COUNTY
Bakersfield: 7,197 customers
MERCED COUNTY
Merced: 2,344 customers
MARIN COUNTY
San Rafael: 48,851 customers
NAPA COUNTY
American Canyon: 14,864 customers
SAN DIEGO COUNTY
San Diego: 14,000 customers
SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY
San Francisco: 8,272 customers
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY
Manteca: 2,689 customers
SAN MATEO COUNTY
San Mateo: 33,930 customers
SANTA CLARA COUNTY
San Jose: 4,553 customers
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
Scotts Valley: 7,322 customers
SOLANO COUNTY
Vallejo: 7,497 customers
SONOMA COUNTY
Sebastopol: 16,912 customers
Cotati: 12,163 customers
Monte Rio: 6,788 customers
Forestville: 3,982 customers
YOLO COUNTY
Winters: 2,039 customers
WHAT ABOUT SMUD CUSTOMERS?
There are no significant outages in the Sacramento area. SMUD, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, isn’t part of the grid system served by the ISO.
Other municipal systems, such as the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, are also not part of the grid agreement, and aren’t subjected to rolling blackouts.
This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 8:01 PM with the headline "This is where the rolling blackouts happened in Northern California each night."
