Sunday’s predicted Northern California electricity blackout turns into false alarm
Three hours after putting out tens of thousands of automated phone calls to Bay Area customers Sunday, warning of yet another set of mandatory power outages, Pacific Gas and Electric acknowledged at 8 p.m. that the threat of a third night of rolling blackouts had passed.
“Based on current forecasts for electricity supply and demand, the state’s electric grid operator, the California Independent System Operator, has communicated to PG&E that the utility does not need to employ rotating power outages in the early to late evening Sunday,” the utility said in a Twitter press statement.
A PG&E spokeswoman said the utility had issued the warning at 5:15 p.m. because, at the time, it appeared a mandatory outage was going to be “likely,” and that PG&E would only be given a 10-minute lead time prior to shutting down power. Spokeswoman Angela Lombardi said the utility felt it was best, after two nights of shutdowns, to give customers the chance to prepare for a loss of power.
But the utility, which services Northern and Central California, warned residents the next few days of extreme heat could well bring more rounds of rotating cutoffs, similar to mandatory outages on Friday and Saturday nights.
The earlier announcement indicated the utility was likely to shut power to 210,000 customers in three Bay Area counties, San Francisco, San Mateo and Contra Costa, as triple-digit temperatures climbed across the state, and with it energy consumption.
The outages on Friday and Saturday evenings lasted only a few hours and were spread over numerous communities, including El Dorado and San Joaquin counties in the Sacramento area, but came as a shock and major inconvenience at the end of back-to-black 100-plus-degree days.
High temperatures will continue to put the state’s electric utility grid at risk of overload throughout the rest of the week. Officials are calling on customers to conserve energy, including setting thermostats at 80 degrees in afternoons.
The ISO’s Stage 3 alert represents the most serious disparity between supply and demand of energy, which causes an inability of the grid to account for minimum power reserves. The ISO’s decision to turn off the lights in parts of the state did not reflect an inability to provide energy to a few thousand homes, but concern for the grid’s operating reserves, which were threatened by the surge in demand. Insufficiency in reserve energy poses a threat to the stability of the entire grid.
The series of blackouts are the first major outages of any kind to hit the state since PG&E instituted a series of “public safety power shutoffs” last fall to reduce wildfire risks. They’re also the first rolling blackouts imposed by the ISO since the 2001 energy crisis, when the main culprits were rogue energy traders exploiting the loopholes in California’s newly-deregulated electricity market.
This time, officials at the ISO say the problem lies with the weather. It was 106 degrees Saturday night in Sacramento. The high temperature in downtown Sacramento was recorded by the National Weather Service was 111 degrees, shattering the record of 108 set a century ago.
The interruptions so far have not affected consumers with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, or SMUD, because it like other municipal systems aren’t part of the ISO’s balancing authority.
However, a SMUD spokesman on Sunday evening said the utility will be asking customers to conserve energy through the remainder of the expected week-long hot spell to avoid electricity shortages that could lead to outages in Sacramento County.
ISO holds emergency meeting
Earlier in the day, the Folsom-based operator activated a Flex Alert, urging consumers to curtail the use of unnecessary electricity as the system struggled to meet the need. The public service announcement will continue nightly through Wednesday.
At 2:55 p.m., the ISO issued a grid alert as its engineers projected a “possible system reserve deficiency” later in the day.
Earlier Sunday, the Folsom-based ISO held an emergency board meeting to discuss “system operations” and other matters, but the meeting was closed to the public. The ISO, a nonprofit public benefit corporation set up by the state to run the grid, didn’t explain why the meeting was private.
Although the system appeared Sunday afternoon to have ample reserves — about 9,000 megawatts more than needed, enough to power about 6 million homes — the situation on the grid can change quickly.
That’s what happened Saturday night as the state buckled under the weight of a scorching heat wave. The ISO had been confident throughout Saturday that it wouldn’t need more blackouts, but grid conditions rapidly went south after a major power plant malfunctioned. The ISO declared a Stage 3 emergency for 20 minutes, but it took hours for some customers to come back online.
The reason for the rolling outages
The reason for the deliberate outages is simple: Demand outstrips supply.
Electricity is used the instant it’s created, and the grid requires a balance of power being generated and used to stay intact. During this latest heat wave, which is forecast to last through Wednesday, the amount of electricity that’s required can outstrip what power plants, solar panels and wind turbines can produce.
When the supply of power is expected to be less than the grid’s needs, the ISO has to shed users to keep the load from dominating one side over the other. The ISO orders the three investor-owned utilities, including PG&E, to do just that.
However, all energy companies in the Western U.S. and Canada are interconnected: A failure in one place, which the rolling blackouts are meant to prevent, could bring down the entire machine.
Complicating this is the size of the heat wave. The high-pressure mass centered over the Las Vegas reaches into California, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Temperatures have solidly sat above the century mark in Sacramento and many places in California since Thursday.
The rest of the West, however, has been above-normal temperatures too, leaving California with fewer places to tap for extra power.
Coronavirus, heat create perfect storm
Ana Matosantos, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cabinet secretary who leads the administration’s energy policy work, said the current grid problems are partly due to shifting energy demands during the pandemic. Energy consumption has been harder to predict since Newsom imposed a stay-at-home order to slow the spread of COVID-19, which shifted energy consumption to residential buildings and out of commercial ones.
“Unfortunately, it’s a confluence of situations that are creating a short-term perfect storm,” Matosantos said. “It’s not a fundamental break in our system as 2001 was. It is a temporary overload based on weather and shifting patterns due to COVID-19 affecting (the ISO’s) ability to plan.”
Meanwhile, the demand for electricity is expected continue Monday and Tuesday. On Saturday, a 100-year-old record for highest temperature of 108 degrees was shattered as downtown Sacramento baked at 111 degrees. The Executive Airport was 109 degrees, breaking last year’s record of 105 degrees.
Forecasters say the temperatures could inch even higher by Tuesday as the heat wave makes its final surge. That means the threat of blackouts will surge alongside those air conditioners, which have to work harder as the mercury climbs.
“Every time the temperature goes up a degree or two, it affects the grid,” Gonzales said.
This story was originally published August 16, 2020 at 5:43 PM.