‘Simply unacceptable.’ Gavin Newsom says California rolling blackouts can’t happen again

In response to a weekend of power outages caused by a heat wave of triple-digit temperatures, and ahead of anticipated blackouts through Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stark statement during a Monday press conference in response to the crisis: this can’t happen again.

Newsom said as governor, he was “ultimately accountable” for the energy failure that left some households without power on Friday and Saturday amid temperatures cruising past 100, and that he’d now “take responsibility to immediately address this issue and move forward to simply make sure this never happens again in the state of California.”

But he said he wasn’t alerted until Friday that California was at risk of rolling blackouts.

“Let me make this crystal clear,” Newsom said. “We failed to predict and plan these shortages, and that’s simply unacceptable.”

Californians up and down the state faced scorching heat this past weekend.

The heat was most suffocating in Death Valley, where temperatures skyrocketed to 130 degrees in what could be the hottest temperature on record since 1913, according to the National Weather Service.

Lightning storms and wind gusts compounded the oppressive heat to spark more than a dozen fires in the state, Newsom said, with officials keeping a close eye on at least four larger blazes.

The Democratic governor said while weather was uncontrollable, the state should have been better prepared to handle the extreme conditions. He said his administration was working with businesses and consumers throughout California, asking them to limit energy consumption from 3 to 10 p.m.

“Even with all of that, we are likely to fall short,” Newsom said, adding that California is expected to fall 4,400 megawatts shy on Monday of what’s needed to keep the lights on for potentially millions of households.

Steve Berberich, the chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, told reporters that an estimated 3.3 million homes and businesses would likely be subjected to power outages late Monday, which would in one of the largest blackouts in state history.

Newsom ordered an investigation into the blackouts, and said his administration would soon lay out in “detailed terms” how to avoid a future power failure.

“I am not pleased with what’s happened,” Newsom said. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

In a meeting before Newsom’s press conference, officials at the California Independent System Operator apologized for not alerting Newsom and other officials sooner about the weekend’s blackouts.

But they also blamed the Public Utilities Commission for much of what’s gone wrong with the grid in the past few days. In particular, ISO chief executive Steve Berberich said the PUC is in charge of enforcing the policy of “resource adequacy,” which requires regulated utilities like PG&E to have plenty of power lined up, under contract, ahead of time.

Berberich said the ISO has been warning the PUC for months, if not years, that shortages were possible if the utilities didn’t secure enough power in advance. But the PUC didn’t listen, he said.

“The resource adequacy program is broken,” he said.

Severin Borenstein, an ISO board member, said his agency can’t force the PUC to implement the “resource adequacy” system. PUC officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

He said that’s left the power grid at the emergency of last-minute, spot-market purchases of power from other states, a strategy that works fine as long as temperatures are moderate in neighboring states. But in the past few days, the entire West is scorching hot, and neighboring states aren’t answering California’s call as they normally would.

“We are calling all the neighboring utilities and doing everything we can,” said John Phipps, the ISO’s director of real time operations, at an ISO board meeting Monday.

A fundamental problem is that solar power, which was generating a quarter of the state’s supply early Monday afternoon, dissipates quickly as the sun goes down. The ISO is nudging the state to postpone the scheduled retirement of a collection of high-carbon gas-fired plants in Southern California.

Overall, though, the ISO said it doesn’t want the state to backslide on its commitment to green energy. “We’re moving forward with a low-carbon grid,” said board member Mary Leslie.

Newsom emphasized that the state remains “committed to radically changing the way we produce and consume energy,” moving away from fossil fuels toward solar and wind.

He said, however, that “we cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition.”

This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 2:25 PM with the headline "‘Simply unacceptable.’ Gavin Newsom says California rolling blackouts can’t happen again."