California pleads for more power as summer blackout threat grows, hydro supplies fade

Acknowledging the increasing threat of rolling blackouts this summer, managers of California’s electricity grid issued a rare call for additional power supplies Thursday.

The California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s grid, issued the appeal to generators, traders and others. The appeal, known as a “capacity procurement mechanism,” came two weeks after the state had a fairly close call but was able to survive a 110-degree heat wave without resorting to blackouts.

The grid manager, in a joint statement with the Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission, said: “Summer has barely begun and we have already had repeated extreme heat events creating dangerous conditions and shattering records across the country.”

Barely two months ago, grid managers were reasonably confident they could avoid blackouts this summer, noting that they’d fortified the grid with thousands of megawatts of new production and storage capacity in the wake of last August’s blackouts.

But since then, two things happened: the mid-June heat wave and a significant worsening of the drought, which is cutting heavily into hydro power supplies. Water levels are so low at Lake Oroville that the state-owned reservoir’s power plant is expected to go silent for the first time ever in August.

The appeal is a call to power generators, trading companies and others with access to Western electricity supplies that can be routed into California, with the idea that the state won’t have to beg for power at the last minute of another heat wave comes. But grid officials have acknowledged that supplies are tightening generally around the West; rolling blackouts hit part of Washington state this week as temperatures hit 117 degrees in parts of the Pacific Northwest.

Anne Gonzales, spokeswoman for the California grid operator, said the the last capacity procurement appeal was made right after last August’s blackouts, when hundreds of thousands of Californians lost power for several hours over two nights. They were the first rolling blackouts in California since the 2001 energy crisis, when supplies were being deliberately manipulated by power traders at Enron and other companies.

Such an appeal “is kind of rare, but these ... conditions are warranting it,” Gonzales said.

The early onset of extreme heat is of particular concern, she said. “We’re seeing it coming on earlier, it’s coming on hotter.”

In the joint statement, the three California agencies said: “As these early heat events telegraph, the grid will be more strained than anticipated this summer due to record-breaking climate change impacts across the West and elsewhere.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2021 at 12:58 PM.