California avoids a third day of blackouts as electricity demand subsides despite heat

Somehow, California avoided the biggest blackout of them all Monday.

The managers of the state’s troubled electricity grid all but guaranteed that sweeping power outages would roll through California for a third day Monday in what could have been the largest blackout in state history.

But as evening came, the California Independent System Operator, manager of the grid, held off on declaring a Stage 3 emergency — which would have triggered a wave of rolling outages that was supposed to leave 3.3 million homes and businesses without power.

Just before 8 p.m., the ISO posted on social media the threat had passed, adding: “Thank you for conserving.”

Initially expected to begin around 3 p.m., the rotating outages would have amounted to one of the largest blackouts in California history, if not the largest, and far more widespread than the blackouts that were imposed Friday and Saturday.

But Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials urged residents to turn up thermostats and shut off major appliance in an effort to limit the spread of the blackouts, and by early evening the ISO’s data logs were showing that demand for energy was peaking at levels considerably below what was anticipated.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. officials expressed relief Monday night, but cautioned that blackouts are possible Tuesday.

“Appreciative of customers – big and small – who answered the call and conserved energy,” PG&E spokeswoman Angela Lombardi said in an email. “We need customers to conserve again tomorrow.”

Hours earlier, ISO chief executive Steve Berberich told reporters that the grid was expecting to come up 4,400 megawatts short of what was needed to meet demand — the equivalent of four nuclear plants.

“We’re going to do everything we can to narrow that gap,” he said. He said the ISO was scouring the West for emergency supplies, and as the evening wore on the ISO’s data charts showed that imports were rolling in somewhat better than expected.

Severin Borenstein, an ISO board member, said the agency was working the phones, imploring large commercial energy users to scale back their consumption.

He added that the coronavirus pandemic and stay-at-home orders were complicating efforts to predict usage. “The models of how people are going to behave on weekdays in particular are completely out of whack,” he said.

A late afternoon cloud cover seemed to have helped; the temperature in Sacramento dipped below 100 before 6 p.m.

SMUD, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, saw its energy demand peak at a level 8% below what was forecast.

“The fact is, the lower temps have helped immensely,” said SMUD spokesman Chris Capra. SMUD wouldn’t have been subjected to any of the rolling blackouts anyway because it isn’t part of the ISO.

David Marcus, an energy consultant and former advisor to the California Energy Commission, said the cut in demand likely came from conservation programs that reward homeowners and businesses with lower rates if they sign up for programs to allow utilities to cut their energy usage at critical times. Plus, people turned up their thermostats and shut appliances off.

“There was almost definitely ... people (who conserved) just by seeing the news,” he said.

At the same time, he said his examination of ISO’s data suggests the agency had jumped the gun by ordering blackouts Friday and Saturday. He said it’s possible the ISO is “failing to follow its own criteria and is calling for blackouts” in non-emergency situations.

In any event, the state isn’t out of the woods, with triple-digit temperatures forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday. “Tomorrow is another bad day. We are not done,” said Borenstein.

Berberich blamed the precarious situation on scorching weather that blanketed the entire West — depriving California of the imported power that has served as the state’s lifeline in previous heat waves over the years.

PG&E alerting customers about blackouts

The major utilities spent the afternoon issuing phone and web alerts to their customers. PG&E, which already had scattered outages throughout the region, made robo-calls to customers in Woodland, Placer County and elsewhere. Officials in Nevada County said they had three “cooling centers” ready to welcome residents.

Amador County officials were struggling to figure out what to tell their residents. Undersheriff Gary Redman said it was tough to plan for blackouts.

”We’re at a loss of when it’s going to occur, or even where it’s going to occur,” he said.

San Diego Gas & Electric, the smallest of the major investor-owned utilities, even announced on its website at around 4 p.m. that it had been ordered by the ISO to implement outages for 100,000 customers.

But more than an hour later, spokeswoman Jessica Packard said the order didn’t say when to begin blackouts, and SDG&E was still standing by for further word from the ISO’s managers in Folsom.

The blackouts were expected to last about two hours each, rotating among blocks of customers. With 3.3 million homes and businesses expected to be affected, it could be the largest blackout in state history. About 940,000 customers were hit by the largest of the wildfire-safety blackouts imposed by PG&E last fall; an estimated 1.3 million were affected by the largest rolling blackout to hit the state in 2001, the only other time the ISO had to resort to such measures.

Just hours before the ISO declared its latest emergency, an irate Newsom demanded an investigation into Friday and Saturday’s blackouts and said he was ready to “move forward to simply make sure this never happens again in the state of California.”

ISO officials said California is being hurt by a heavy reliance on solar power, which can generate 25% or more of the state’s supply but dissipates quickly as the sun goes down.

Berberich criticized the Public Utilities Commission for not implementing stricter “resource adequacy” rules — protocols that require the regulated utilities to line up more of their power well ahead of time. California gets about a quarter of its power from out state typically.

“I know they’re working on this,” Berberich said of PUC officials. “We would want them to work quicker.”

PUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said in an email: “This is a shared responsibility, and we are working with our sister agencies to better understand why this occurred. Our current focus is the public’s safety and to emphasize the importance of energy conservation to reduce the strain on electric supply.

“The electricity demand of the last few days is consistent with the level the agencies have for August and the utilities and community choice aggregators procured the resources that were required to meet the forecasts. The question we’re tackling is why certain resources were not available.

“The CPUC has already made rule changes and modifications to the forecasting to adjust for changes in imported electricity that largely go into effect in 2021. As the Governor has directed, we and our sister agencies need to investigate this thoroughly to understand the how and why of the supply deficiencies that began on Friday. The many factors must be assessed in their entirety.”

This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 7:58 PM.