UPDATE: PG&E said no rotating power outages will occur tonight.
PG&E told customers Monday to expect rotating power outages during the evening as residents attempt to keep cool during the Bay Area’s ongoing heat wave.
PG&E issued a statement warning of potential outages after the California Independent System Operator, the organization that manages the state’s power grid, issued a flex alert.
Residents statewide are encouraged to avoid using electricity as much as possible through Wednesday, according to the CAISO, which issued the flex alert following power outages across the Bay Area over the weekend due to the heat.
Rolling blackouts/brownouts are anticipated to affect residents in parts of Antioch, Brentwood, Concord, El Cerrito and Walnut Creek until 10 p.m. today, according to the Contra Costa County Public Works Department.
Does anyone know the exact reason PG&E cannot come up with enough power for when the weather warms up? Seems to me they have been at this long enough to do the job right. Is the state holding them up or is the cost of past times burning down of the state the cause.
my understanding is that they used to be regulated and if a transformer had a 20 year expected life span, they replaced it then. When they were deregulated, (gee thanks Gov. Wilson) they started leaving the bits and pieces up until they break. So now we have a completely old, fragile, out of date system.
It’s not PG&E, it’s CAISO. They are the ones who determine if the grid can handle the demand and instruct PG&E and every other utility company in California to shut off if needed. PG&E just announced that CAISO has determined that the grid can handle demand and there will be no shut offs tonight.
Politicians running this state decided they can store electricity just like we store water. They’ve decided to use batteries.
In southern CA a 750 mega watt natural gas power plant that still had a useful life of 20 YEARS was scrapped.
CA also had peaker plants specifically built to handle peak loads on HOT days. This was before green democrats when rational thought and planning prevailed.
“We failed to predict and plan these shortages and that’s simply unacceptable,” — newsom said today.
That statement is pure male bovine excrement ! ! ! !
All of us are paying the price in taxes and utility bills so democrat politicians can show the world how green they are. Wonder how mush politicians stand to rake in,
in campaign contributions from battery method ?
Those democrat politicians bear no consequences for their Hubris and pernicious incompetence.
Seriously, that is a very good question, and one that I’ve pondered myself.
@Me – don’t drink the PG&E Kool-Aid. The reason CAISO is telling PG&E to reduce the load they are taking from other suppliers and utilities is because PG&E does not have sufficient generation capacity to serve their own customers.
For example, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has sufficient power to both serve their own customers with no rotating outages and are able to feed excess power to grid for use by other utilities. CAISO has not and will not by asking LA power to reduce their load.
The city of Redding also generates their own power and has sufficient capacity that they also were not affected by this week’s rotating outages. Both LA power and Redding also never needed to do any public safety power shutoffs in 2019.
The Green New Deal,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state had to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources had failed to provide enough power for the state at peak demand, and needed “backup” and “insurance” from other sources.
So far, the demand is below the availability.
Conservation works.
We shouldn’t have to conserve.
We need better representatives, from the top down.
conservation doesn’t work when there is no supply:
http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx
totally ridiculous.
It feels like a third world country. I have been living here since the 80’s andI always had hoped that this state would progress. But nope, it is going backwards.
We had a power outage starting around 4:00 a.m. yesterday and ending at (maybe) 2 p.m. or so.
It wasn’t a deliberate outage – maybe something to do with the windstorm that sent my patio umbrellas flying. I also heard that a transformer blew.
I didn’t get my cell-phone service back till about 09:00 today.
In Rancho Diablo.
all I hear are more lies. whats the real reason though because I am far too intelligent to believe that in 2020 PG&e cannot produce enough power especially since plenty of people have switched to solar.
Solar drops off sharply as the Sun sets. That’s a large part of why the critical periods this week are in the early evenings where we are loosing or have lost the solar part of the mix but are still running air conditioners, cooking, opening the refrigerator lot causing it to run more, charging electric cars, doing laundry, and have entertainment electronics plus lights on.
Also, while cloud cover and smoke from the wildfires have a cooling affect that reduces the available solar power.
Read the editorial on the power generation situation in California in today’s Wall Street Journal. They provide some of the back story on why we are again faced with this unfortunate situation.
PGE posted 30 mins ago on twitter that there will be no outages tonight.
Any of PG&E’s 5 million electric customers can be affected by the practice known as Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), which cuts electricity to avoid causing fires during high winds and dry conditions
@lisa, PG&E has very specifically said that the outages that have occurred this week (and may continue to occur) are not PSPS outages.
Today in the failed nation state of California with the 6th largest economy in the world
“Residents are encouraged to avoid using electricity as much as possible through Wednesday”
No – We are going to run our A/Cs throughout the day, evening, and night until we are cool. We have nowhere else to go because the country has been shut down & the masks have clearly not worked since coronavirus is spreading.
Do you think with PG&E utility upgrade, installing smart meters, might solve the problem of power outage California seems to have every summer?
Absolutely not. Smart Meters were installed between 2009 to 2011 and 98+% of PG&E customers have them.
“Smart” meters give them the ability to punish you with top rates for using too much power during a peak time.
Will they go as far as selectively shutting off individual homes who are drawing too much energy during a flex alert? They have the ability, time will tell.
@Anon, I’m actually surprised that they haven’t selectively shut-off homes yet. I’m sure that’s coming. It better not happen to us after we paid for solar.
Smart meters have nothing to do with it. It’s a supply problem. There is so much solar power produced during the day that state pays other states to take our excess production. Then, when the sun goes down, production drop way off, so the rolling blackouts hit. There needs to be production of reliable electricity. Key word: reliable. There have been power plants closed before their useful life was over for political reasons, because they didn’t fall into the “renewable” category. So enjoy your blackouts on hot days!
a mad max world. we are already there.
After reading the above, it seems California folks understand this shortage of power relates to politicians and bureaucrats lacking the will or means to take corrective action. That has been the case for nearly 40 years. Coal fire plants, hydroelectric plants etc. have been dismantled. Nuclear plants decommissioned. Much in the name of environmental correctness. New power sources from wind and solar have not been the answer.
Yet we continue to drink the koolaide and elect the same failed politicians who appoint the same failed bureaucrats to manage our states power facilities.
Wake up California. Vote these fools out and replace them with some pragmatic adults to run our state.
Another gripe I have is the lack of warning before they shut down power. If they can send texts saying there won’t be a shut off, then they should send warning texts at least 30 minutes to an hour before. That way, we can prepare, move our cars out of the garage, save our work, get the ice and beer out of the fridge and into a cooler, etc. I feel like we are living in the stone ages.
PG&E is not the problem. They own power plants (natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear) that generate only about one third of the electricity supplied to its customers. The rest is purchased from third party suppliers including owners of industrial co-generation plants, solar farms, etc. When Diablo Canyon fully shuts down in 2025 they will be down to generating only one tenth of the demand!
The new power sources that the State is allowing are all of the roof top solar now mandated on new buildings, new wind farms, and more large scale solar farms.
The demand for electricity is growing faster than the growth in supply. All those electric vehicles you see n the road and all the new fancy cell phones in the hands of everyone in the state is driving up demand. The State’s “plan” is to mandate new standards for light bulbs and other appliances.
MCE users shouldn’t have a problem right?
yea, and build more housing against every locals’ wishes …