Rolling blackouts expected today for 1 million Californians, energy officials warn

The manager of California’s power grid said a third night of rolling blackouts Monday was a near certainty, taking in millions across the state as the West continues to swelter and electricity supplies dry up.

UPDATE: ‘THANK YOU FOR CONSERVING’ — ROLLING BLACKOUTS AVERTED FOR 2ND NIGHT

Steve Berberich, the chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, told reporters that an estimated 3.3 million homes and businesses are likely to be blacked out.

It would represent one of the largest blackouts in state history, if not the largest. The most widespread of the wildfire-safety blackouts imposed by PG&E Corp. last October left 941,000 customers without power, albeit for longer periods. A rolling blackout during the energy crisis in March 2001 affected 1.3 million customers.

Officials said the blackouts could begin as early as 4 p.m. However, no blackouts had been ordered as evening came, and the ISO tweeted that it still anticipated declaring an emergency between 7 and 8 p.m.

Utility officials were in a standby mode. “PG&E is still expecting rotating outages to occur this evening,” said utility spokeswoman Brandi Merlo.

“We are not out of the woods,” said ISO board member Severin Borenstein.

David Marcus, an energy consultant and former advisor to the California Energy Commission, said Californians were reducing demand in response to calls for conservation.

At the same time, he said his examination of ISO’s data suggests the agency had jumped the gun by ordering blackouts Friday and Saturday.

Although PG&E and other big utilities plan to rotate the blackouts every hour or two, it can take several hours for customers to get their power restored.

Berberich said a major problem is a shortage of supplies that could be imported from utilities in neighboring states. California has been able to ride through previous heat waves because it could get power elsewhere. This time, though, “we are facing diminished imports because the West is heating up,” Berberich said at an ISO board meeting Monday morning.

“It’s a perfect storm; we can’t count on imports,” said ISO board member Angelina Galiteva.

The blackouts Friday and Saturday night hit several hundred thousand households and businesses and most customers had the lights back on within two or three hours.

John Phipps, the agency’s director of real-time operations., said another big blackout is likely Tuesday although he had fewer details.

Making matters worse is the size of the looming blackouts. Phipps said the ISO is facing a deficit Monday afternoon of 4,400 megawatts — about the equivalent of four nuclear plants. That’s four times as much as the shortfall that gripped the system Friday night and about eight times as bad as Saturday. That means a lot more customers will be without power.

“I truly, truly wish there were other options,” Berberich said. “We’re going to do everything we can to narrow that gap.”

SMUD wouldn’t be affected by the statewide problems because it isn’t part of the ISO.

Reliance on solar and renewable energy

Berberich said the state is facing a fundamental problem: California is heavily reliant on solar and other renewable energy sources, and in the evening the solar power vanishes even as more customers switch on their air conditioning. He said the ISO has been sounding the alarm for some time that shortages were coming, to the point that it’s been trying to persuade environmental regulators to postpone the shutdown of some badly polluting power plants in Southern California that are scheduled to be mothballed at year’s end.

Berberich blasted regulators at the Public Utilities Commission for exacerbating the supply problem. He said the ISO has warned the PUC for years that grid problems were looming — and has been badgering the PUC to do a better job of forcing the big regulated utilities to line up a lot more power ahead of time, a concept known as “resource adequacy.”

But he said the PUC ignored those warnings and the ISO system has often been forced to rely on last-minute imports to avoid blackouts — imports that are in short supply this week because neighboring states are baking.

“The situation we are in could have been avoided,” Berberich said. “The resource adequacy is broken.”

Berberich said the state relies on imports for about 25% of its power on average. “It’s not bad to do that (but) you need to make sure your supply is secure,” he said.

He said the PUC is “as dedicated to reliability as much as we are” but is burdened by “ponderous processes.”

Although the ISO has suspended a form of power trading called “convergence bidding,” saying it was making the grid more volatile, Berberich said the ISO hasn’t seen any signs of supplies being deliberately withheld from the grid.

At the same time, Berberich said the ISO did a poor job of warning the public, the utilities “and particularly the governor’s office” that blackouts were coming last weekend. He said the ISO knew the situation on the grid was turning dicey but it thought it could succeed in avoiding blackouts.

“We own that and we’re sorry,” he said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier in the day ordered an investigation into the blackouts, calling the situation unacceptable.

PUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said in an email: “This is a shared responsibility, and we are working with our sister agencies to better understand why this occurred. Our current focus is the public’s safety and to emphasize the importance of energy conservation to reduce the strain on electric supply.

“The electricity demand of the last few days is consistent with the level the agencies have for August and the utilities and community choice aggregators procured the resources that were required to meet the forecasts. The question we’re tackling is why certain resources were not available.

“The CPUC has already made rule changes and modifications to the forecasting to adjust for changes in imported electricity that largely go into effect in 2021. As the Governor has directed, we and our sister agencies need to investigate this thoroughly to understand the how and why of the supply deficiencies that began on Friday. The many factors must be assessed in their entirety.”

This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 12:14 PM with the headline "Rolling blackouts expected today for 1 million Californians, energy officials warn."