Name: Bay Area heat wave continues; PG&E says no rolling blackouts needed Sunday evening
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Bay Area heat wave continues; PG&E says no rolling blackouts needed Sunday evening

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigatePacific Gas &amp; Electric Co. said rolling outages were not necessary on Sunday evening, despite earlier concerns that over 200,000 homes and businesses would be temporarily blacked out in San Francisco, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties as the power grid struggled to meet demand.“No Rotating Power Outages Needed Tonight in PG&amp;E Service Area,” the company tweeted shortly before 8 p.m.The state power grid operator — which is in charge of determining whether outages are necessary and directing utilities like PG&amp;E to implement them — said earlier Sunday that Californians “should be prepared for likely rolling outages during the late afternoons and early evenings through Wednesday” as an extraordinary heatwave continues to strain the grid. Rolling outages were implemented on Saturday and Sunday nights.Lightning strikes over the ocean off the Santa Cruz coastline, seen from Manresa State Beach in Watsonville, California.The Bay Area’s extraordinarily warm, stormy weather is expected to continue for several days.?“?: Read more: — San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle)The California Independent System Operator asked residents to conserve energy between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. each day, to help power plants meet demand.“A persistent, record-breaking heat wave in California and the western states is causing a strain on supplies,” the grid operator said, adding: “There is not a sufficient amount of energy to meet the high amounts of demand during the heatwave.”Severin Borenstein, ISO board member and energy economist at UC Berkeley, said Monday will probably be the worst based on the weather forecast. He said the outages are due in part to the “crazy weather,” and people’s homes have not had time to cool down in the extreme temperatures so they turn the air conditioning on earlier.Another part of it is the state’s growing reliance on solar energy. The outages have been occurring between 6 to 9 p.m.“We are running a system with a lot of solar,” Borenstein said. “When solar goes away when the sun sets, we need other power. We have been rightly phasing out gas plants for very good reasons, but when you combine the lack of replacement for those with the crazy weather, we’re just in the situation where we’re going to be short.”Bay Area WeatherBorenstein added that the outages weren’t very large in comparison to the more widespread public safety shutoffs, in which PG&amp;E and other utilities shut down power to high fire risk areas lest the equipment spark a blaze. But he said the issue is still serious.In the Bay Area, the extraordinarily warm, stormy weather is expected to continue for several days, with more thunder and lightning Sunday and Monday, and excessive heat likely through Wednesday.The that has pushed temperatures into the triple digits across the region over the past two days On Sunday, Livermore and Concord both reached 104 degrees. Napa reached 103 degrees on Saturday, breaking its previous high temperature of 102 from 1906, according to the National Weather Service.More 100-plus temperatures are in the forecast for interior parts of the Bay Area through mid-week, though Sunday’s clouds and moisture have provided at least some brief respite. Temperatures are expected to reach the high 80s or low 90s along the coast and above 100 inland, according to Anna Schneider, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.“The high pressure system that’s bringing the hot weather is expected to stick around through the end of the week,” Schneider said.California grid managers on Friday and Saturday initiated rotating power cuts out of concern that the state’s utilities could not keep up with electricity demand as people cranked up their air conditioners and as clouds covered desert skies and limited solar power production. It’s the first time power has been proactively shut off because of supply problems since the state’s energy crisis in 2001. The outages are unrelated to the occasional public safety shutoffs that PG&amp;E has implemented during hot and dry weather, to keep its equipment from sparking wildfires.In addition to solar energy, California has relied “very heavily” on energy imports from other states, Borenstein said. But the rest of the west coast is also experiencing record temperatures, so importing is not a good option right now.Storage is another solution, and the state is investing in more technologies, but Borenstein said that is costly.“Another solution is time shifting of demand, and we do way too little of that,” he said.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.The pandemic has also created a unique problem as well.“It’s much harder to forecast demand now,” he said. “The models we use are based on normal societal flow. We use past data to estimate what happens in the future.”He said weekend demand isn’t much lower than weekday demand now. Usually, it drops off much lower this time of year.Jeff Smith, a spokesman for PG&amp;E, said the utility company is encouraging all customers to conserve as much power as possible for the next few days, and to prepare for the possibility rolling blackouts. He said the utilitity only get about 10 minutes notice from the state grid managers before the outages must begin.“If they are called for, the outages should be relatively short — about 1 to 2 hours,” he said.Energy conservation measures Californians can take include putting off certain chores — such as running dishwashers or washing machines — until the evening or later in the week, Smith said. PG&amp;E also asked customers to raise their thermostats, cover windows, avoid using the oven and limit the amount of times they open the refrigerator.“Not only are we seeing really hot temperatures in the places where we normally see them, but we are also seeing them in areas that are typically much cooler during this time of year,” said Smith. “That’s what is really causing this (over)load.”Staff writer J.D. Morris contributed to this story.Tatiana Sanchez and Kellie Hwang are San Francisco Chroncle staff writers. Email: Twitter: KellieHwangUpdated 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 navigatePacific Gas &amp; Electric Co. said rolling outages were not necessary on Sunday evening, despite earlier concerns that over 200,000 homes and businesses would be temporarily blacked out in San Francisco, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties as the power grid struggled to meet demand.“No Rotating Power Outages Needed Tonight in PG&amp;E Service Area,” the company tweeted shortly before 8 p.m.The state power grid operator — which is in charge of determining whether outages are necessary and directing utilities like PG&amp;E to...

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Kellie Hwang

Tatiana Sanchez

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Bay Area heat wave continues; PG&E says no rolling blackouts needed Sunday evening

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