California blackouts this summer? State offers ‘guarded optimism’ the lights will stay on

The managers of California’s electricity system can’t promise they’ll be able to keep the lights on this summer.

Still reeling from two nights of rolling blackouts during last August’s heatwave, state officials say they’ve fortified the power grid against more outages but acknowledge that another extraordinary surge in temperatures could spell trouble.

“We have some guarded optimism that we’re going to get through it,” said Elliot Mainzer, president of the California Independent System Operator, which runs the electric grid.

In a conference call with reporters late Tuesday, Mainzer and other leaders of California’s power network said PG&E Corp. and the state’s other major utilities have lined up more power since last summer. By August, California should have roughly 3,500 additional megawatts of capacity compared to last year, enough electricity to power more than 2.6 million homes.

That should be enough to steer California through a major heatwave — even the 110-plus temperatures recorded last August — as long as the scorching weather is confined to California. But if it’s another “West-wide heat event” that smothers multiple states, as was the case last August, then California might not be able to import enough power to get through the crunch, Mainzer said.

“If it’s really hot here and it’s really hot everywhere ... things will really tighten up,” he said.

The summer forecast reflects the difficult balancing act California faces as it transitions to a carbon-free power grid by 2045 — the target set by the Legislature.

The state gets more than one-third of its power from solar and other renewable resources, and the percentage rises considerably in spring and summer. For a few seconds in late April, the grid was running on 95% renewable energy, a record.

Yet the movement to an all-green grid is creating headaches. Last August’s blackouts occurred in part because of the rapid decline in solar production during the early evening hours, when the sun went down but it was still hot.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has embraced California’s role as a leader in the fight against climate change, has vowed not to retreat from the move to an all-renewable grid even as he demands greater reliability in the state’s electricity supply.

Yet Marybel Batjer, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said the effort to keep the lights on this summer has meant some compromises.

While nearly 2,000 megawatts of the newly-added energy is in the form of industrial-scale batteries — which can store excess solar power for nighttime use — some of the additions are electrons generated the old-fashioned way, by natural gas-fired plants that have signed contracts with the big utilities.

“We’re not pleased that we still have to use gas, fossil fuels,” Batjer said.

Texas blackouts far worse than those in California

But there’s little alternative to temporarily increasing the use of gas-fired power, she said. Electric supplies will be tight for the next several years, especially with PG&E scheduled to retire its Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo in 2025. The plant has 2,200 megawatts of capacity.

“We have some pressure on us for the next three or four years,” Batjer said.

Last summer’s rolling blackouts were the first in California since the 2001 energy crisis, when companies like Enron were able to exploit flaws in the state’s market structure and deliberately withhold power in order to jack up prices.

State officials said they were embarrassed by last year’s blackouts but said they were small in scope compared to the disaster that struck Texas in February, when millions were blacked out for days. The California blackouts struck several hundred thousand households for a total of about three hours.

The Texas outages “were about 500 times worse,” said David Hochschild, chairman of the California Energy Commission.

This story was originally published May 5, 2021 at 10:17 AM with the headline "California blackouts this summer? State offers ‘guarded optimism’ the lights will stay on."