Based on current power usage forecasts, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) will likely direct PG&E to enact rotating power outages in the early to late Sunday evening in portions of San Francisco, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties, affecting an estimated 210,000 customers.
None of the outages is expected to last into the overnight hours,
Outages will last an estimated one to two hours. PG&E’s Emergency Operations Center is activated as of Sunday evening, working closely with the ISO to support these temporary outages.
Rotating outages are needed when the Independent System Operator is unable to meet contingency power reserve requirements. During these “Stage 3″emergencies, the ISO will typically order the state’s utilities, including PG&E, to reduce electrical load by turning off service immediately, in order to prevent larger outages on the grid.
Utilities will not be able to give advance warning to customers.
These rotating outages differ from the PG&E “Public Safety Power Shutoffs” called during specific high-fire-threat conditions, and are not related to any issues with PG&E’s equipment or its ability to deliver energy locally.
PG&E customers are “strongly urged” to conserve electricity through at least Wednesday night through measures including raising thermostats to at least 78 degrees, using a ceiling fan to bolster air conditioners’ performance, covering windows, avoid using the oven, open the refrigerator as few times as possible and use washing machines and dishwashers early in the morning or after 10 p.m.
With all of the closed businesses why is there a shortage of electricity?
good question rich, i bet gavin would say someone who asked it was a racist. that way he doesn’t have to answer it.
Excellent question!
Well PG&E…
good point!
Churches and schools are closed too!
Why? Because the imbeciles at PG&E caved to leftist “progressives” morons and put billions $$ into wind and solar, with both of these parties too stupid to know there can be days where there’s little/no wind and clouds over the desert solar arrays, AND that these events just might occur during a heatwave.
Thank you Pete. Bending science to suit a political narrative is detrimental to human life.
https://recallgavin2020.com/
All any of us want is clean, reliable and inexpensive electricity.
Clean and inexpensive is way to much to ask for.
How about just reliealbe.
But I guess that’s too much for ask for too.
The demand requires something like Geothermal Energy.
Or, Nuclear.
Why is it that California is suddenly unable to do anything? The state can’t even handle a few days of 100 degree weather without “rotating power outages”. ABC7 said yesterday to stock up on cash and gas. Every little thing now is an emergency.
These sort of power outages happened in Texas and I’m sure it goes on in other states. No one wants a power plant within 100 miles of them. If it’s really a problem, get solar.
hey fred, you might want to see OGs comment below. solar don’t work at night buddy.
The left’s “scorched earth” strategy to defeat Trump. Everything else failed, and the clock is winding down. While this should backfire in spectacular fashion, this year has produced one unpleasant surprise after another.
@ Bob. Well said. And it is by design.
BUT, But, but, this state is green we have Solar and wind generating electricity. We are the envy of the world ’cause we’re so green.
An here it is after 6 in the evening so solar panel output is about zero. On these hot days wind is usually calm, so not much power coming out of the wind farms.
So when your power goes out, you’re sitting in the dark sweating, take a moment or three to thank liberal politicians who CONTROL this state and make a mental note not to reelect them. An because of their efforts you have the privilege of paying some of the highest utility rates in the country.
Yup – and just think ….the “green new deal” is gonna make things MUCH worse.
wait and see.
Batteries
I know you can look up your address for power safety shutoff information when they plan on shutting down during high fire danger events but I’m unable to find a link to see if our neighborhood is scheduled for the rolling blackouts. Does such a link exist? Anyone know?
You can see a map showing areas designated for outages at
https://projects.sfchronicle.com/trackers/power-outages/
Click the button in the upper left to “Interact” with the map, zooming in to street level view.
MoJo – here’s a link to general outages and you can look up your own address: http://critweb-outage.pgealerts.com/?WT.mc_id=Vanity_pge-outages
There’s another page listing planned emergency shut offs, when there’s high power, etc. I can’t find that right now.
The rolling blackouts do not fall into the emergency cut off scheme, so I don’t think there’s a schedule. Share wish there was!
MoJo – For these rolling blackouts – PGE has a fancy name for them, don’t immediately remember – there is no website to tell you if your address is likely to get shut off. You’ll just get shut off. So wrong, on so many levels.
Welcome to California 2020.
You can sign up for alerts for Public Safety Power Shutoffs fir your zip code at the PGE website
https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/psps-zip-codes.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_pspszipcodealerts
I signed up for alerts and got a telephone call this afternoon saying I might be effected by power shut offs tonight.
C’mon Man!
This mornings raging winds should have generated a little extra to cover it, and there should be more tonight.
It’s a good thing we have the CPUC, to ensure that communities and citizens have safe and RELIABLE power. Maybe the PG&E executives need a raise, and a few million more each, so we don’t have to suffer Third-world like intermittent power supply.
That’s because PG&E is too busy holding “SALT” task force conference calls about the NON-EXISTENT “racism” in the company whIle catering to the “Black Employees Resource Group” and attending American Association of Blacks in Energy meetings.
But what good does any of that do when your power is out???
So at 5:54 PM today, got a pre-recorded telephone call from PGE about the rolling blackouts. So nice they call during the dinner hour, when I was busy fixing dinner.
Anyway, the message was a 1 min and 38 seconds ad nauseum message recorded from a young adult male who sounded stoned. Didn’t provide any specifics other than CoCo County may have electricity shut off due to the weather. They gave the shutoffs a new fangled fancy name. Need to listen to the saved VM again to hear what it is.
What a joke. We pay some of the highest utilities and taxes in the nation, and this is what we’re left with. A third world country. Or a 3rd world Nation State, as Gov Newsom would perhaps say.
I’m an optimist. But this situation is pitiful. Plain pitiful.
So I pay taxes for school but my kid’s can’t go
So my employer and myself pay for healthcare but I’m unable to go for a now over due health screening and a physical
So I pay for utilities but they can turn it off at any moment
And getting alerts that my children will most likely not even have online school this week bc of rolling blackouts
Wow the quality of life is just getting better and better
Don’t worry, the political and elite class that push this stuff wont suffer. They have the money for solar and generators. They have the resources to send their kids to private school or tutor them. They can get in to see the doc if they need to, or pay cash for a house call. They can afford gated communities with private security. It’s just us normal people that pay our dues and play by the rules that get screwed.
Does no one see that California, the single place in this country that has gone the furthest with progressive left ideals, is the most unequal state of the nation? Traffic sucking up your life’s time? Just pay extra for the rich person lane! Housing cost too high? Well, it might hurt the property values of the folks who already got theirs if you build any more. Hey I know! Let’s jack up gas taxes so the poor working class that has to commute the furthest to man our service industries have to pay more! If they don’t like it, they can just get a Tesla. Hit them with higher bridge tolls too. You know, there’s a lot of people in jail. Let’s just declare that crimes are no longer crimes! Problem solved. I mean after all, the criminals we let out aren’t going to bother us in our gated communities, they’ll just go rob and pillage the poor and working class schmos.
A commenter above actually said if you don’t like the outages, just get solar. It’s the new “let them eat cake.” Hey, where do I put them on my apartment? On the 30 square foot balcony? Maybe I should get one of those exercise bikes that runs a generator, eh?
And in two months, the people of California are going to vote for more of this. Until Californians hold their nose and elect some Republicans, the Democratic party doesn’t give one flying leap about any of this. They have your vote, you are in the bank.
This state disgusts me.
Wage Slave , you are right . What amazes me is how seemingly intelligent people keep voting for the same lying corrupt politicians over and over again . Our quality of life is going down because of high taxes and high cost of living .It’s going to get worse with the liberal dems in power . That’s a fact .They have changed California into a state for the rich and the poor to serve them . Their biggest supporters are college students because they promise them all kinds of free stuff and the kids believe it . What are they teaching our kids . Despicable. How is it going to work when everybody gets home from work and plugs in their electric cars ? I keep hoping people will wake up before it’s to late .
@Mary Fouts – I too got a call at 5:45pm. They called them rotating outages and also used the term as a verb “… may require PG&E and other electric utilities to turn off power while rotating outages.” The message I got said nothing about Coco county.
On the PG&E web site they use the term rotating outages. It appears the way it works is that Cal ISO will ask a utility to reduce its load to a specific number of megawatts. It’s up to the utility to figure out how to do this. PG&E uses rotating outages to shed the load to get within Cal ISO’s target.
While I don’t think the guy who recorded the message was stoned he apparently was required to try to claim as much as possible that the outages are not PG&E’s fault while ignoring that the reason for the outages is because PG&E does not have sufficient power generation capacity to handle peak loads. Electric utilities such as the one for Los Angeles and the city of Redding do not need to concern themselves with rotating outages nor public safety power shutoffs as they have sufficient internal capacity.
For a state whose economy is the 6th best in the world, California’s infrastructure doesn’t show it.
There’s some useful information in here about why the rolling blackouts. Hint: solar doesn’t produce electricity when it’s cloudy, and when the sun goes down. Peaker plants are being closed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/california-avoided-rolling-blackouts-for-two-decades-what-went-wrong-on-the-grid/ar-BB180sYj