California’s grid conditions improve but conservation still needed to avert blackouts today

For the first time in three days, the managers of California’s beleaguered electricity grid aren’t predicting rolling blackouts.

But they said they still need significant amounts of energy conservation to get through Wednesday without any power outages — and acknowledged that Californians might be getting tired of turning up their thermostats.

“We are quite mindful that people are fatigued,” said Steve Berberich, chief executive of the Independent System Operator, which runs the grid.

The ISO issued another Flex Alert for Wednesday, this time beginning at 2 p.m. instead of the usual 3 p.m., urging Californians to turn off major appliances and take other energy-saving steps. Berberich said the alert started early because the 2-3 p.m. hour has been particularly challenging for grid conditions the past couple of days.

Energy usage wasn’t expected to be quite as severe as previous days. He said consumption was expected to peak at 46,818 megawatts Wednesday, about 300 megawatts below Tuesday’s highest usage.

Nevertheless, Berberich said the ISO needs about 2,000 megawatts worth of conservation — the equivalent of a pair of nuclear plants — to stave off rolling blackouts. On Tuesday, he said Californians saved about 3,000 megawatts as the state managed through its second straight ultra-hot day after predicting widespread blackouts earlier in the day.

This followed rolling blackouts Friday and Saturday, the first of their kind since the 2001 energy crisis.

Unless a major power plant conks out, “we expect to meet our obligations (Wednesday) with the conservation measures,” he told reporters.

He said big industrial users such as Tesla led the way on conservation Monday and Tuesday, by scaling back their own usage as well as firing up their backup generators to help feed the grid.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose staff was working the phones to big customers, said refineries run by Chevron and Marathon also helped with conserving energy.

This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 2:15 PM with the headline "California’s grid conditions improve but conservation still needed to avert blackouts today."