Name: PG&E restores power on second night of outages after 220,000 customers blacked out
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PG&E restores power on second night of outages after 220,000 customers blacked out

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateCalifornia electric grid managers briefly triggered a second round of rolling blackouts Saturday as a blistering heat wave continued and the state’s energy supply once again fell short.The California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state’s grid, called for more rotating outages at 6:28 p.m. but 20 minutes later determined the need had passed.System operator officials said in a statement that the latest power loss was required because of high demand for electricity, the “unexpected loss” of a 470-megawatt power plant and the unavailability of about 1,000 megawatts of wind power. Grid managers told utilities to start bringing power back at 6:48 p.m. when wind energy resources picked up.Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it was turning off power for about 220,000 homes and businesses in portions of the Central Coast and Central Valley. Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Joaquin counties would be among those affected, PG&amp;E said, noting shortly after 7 p.m. that it had already started turning the lights back on. Shortly after 9 p.m., PG&amp;E said it had restored electricity to most affected customers.The Saturday blackouts came one day after California grid managers instituted rotating power cuts for the first time since the energy crisis in 2001. System operator officials have blamed the widespread and prolonged heatwave impacting the state.Conditions were better on Saturday. The grid benefited from an additional 1,800 megawatts of electricity coming from three power plants that were not available when Friday’s outages started, according to Anne Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the system operator. .The grid freed up another 900 megawatts by getting homes and businesses to use less power, Gonzales said.PG&amp;E’s rolling outages affected about 220,000 California homes and businesses Friday night, as the grid staggered under the energy demands, particularly air conditioning, brought on by the heat wave. Power went off for many affected customers at 6:35 p.m. on Friday, and everyone was restored by about 10:15 p.m., PG&amp;E said.Persistent heat, including high overnight temperatures, placed high demand on the grid and cloud cover in the desert has also made solar power more volatile, according to the system operator. Though electricity demand was also high on Saturday as the heat wave persisted, grid managers were better positioned to handle the squeeze, Gonzales said.Loretta Lynch, who was president of the California Public Utilities Commission from 2000 to 2002, said Friday’s blackouts seemed unnecessary.Bay Area Heat WaveLynch noted that demand peaked Friday at about 46,800 megawatts, and California had experienced “way higher” electricity usage before. The grid should have had enough energy available even accounting for the system operator’s comments that some power plants were not in use Friday.“The power should have been available because we bought it,” Lynch said. “We contracted for it to be there when called, so why didn’t it get delivered? ... It’s frightening to me that the ISO couldn’t handle this level of power usage.”Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.In addition to the plants that were offline Friday, Gonzales also noted that the Friday blackouts began late in the day, just as the state’s solar capacity plummeted.It’s not clear yet if more blackouts will happen as high temperatures are expected to continue for several more days.Gonzales said the grid managers can’t tell how the pandemic, and its role in keeping more people confined to their homes, influenced the blackouts on Friday.“The heat is the primary driver of this shortage,” she said in the email.PG&amp;E said its emergency operations team will continue to monitor the situation into next week and encouraged customers to save as much energy as possible through Wednesday.J.D. Morris is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Twitter:Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateCalifornia electric grid managers briefly triggered a second round of rolling blackouts Saturday as a blistering heat wave continued and the state’s energy supply once again fell short.The California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state’s grid, called for more rotating outages at 6:28 p.m. but 20 minutes later determined the need had passed.System operator officials said in a statement that the latest power loss was required because of high demand for electricity, the “unexpected loss” of a 470-megawatt...

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J.D. Morris

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PG&E restores power on second night of outages after 220,000 customers blacked out

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