Los Angeles — Poor connectivity has led utilities to mistakenly cut power to customers in several California cities during unprecedented demand for power supplies, state power grid operators acknowledged Wednesday while warning that continued sweltering heat could lead to much larger interruptions in cycling. .
Confusion occurred Tuesday afternoon between a dispatcher at the Northern California Energy Agency, which owns and operates power-generation facilities for 16 members including dozens of cities, and the California Independent System operator as the grid running it was on the verge of dangerously running out amidst power. Standard temperatures.
“This is definitely something that worries me,” said Elliot Mainzer, Cal-ISO President and CEO. “There was a lot of action on the grid for everyone last night. So we’re going to double the call to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
With record demand for power supplies across the West, California cut its record energy use around 5 p.m. with 52,061 megawatts, well above the previous high of 50,270 megawatts on July 24, 2006.
As residents and businesses turned on air conditioning to escape the sweltering heat across the West and solar supplies began to vanish, Cal-ISO issued a Phase 3 power emergency alert to prepare utilities to start outages if demand did not drop. The state’s legal marijuana regulatory agency also urged businesses to turn off lights, reduce power or use backup generators.
The Northern California Energy Agency said its dispatcher misinterpreted the Cal-ISO order to prepare for a power cut and immediately proceeded with a 46-megawatt cut — enough to serve about 35,000 customers — in the cities of Alameda, Lodi, Santa Clara, Palo Alto and Healdsburg. , and Okia.
It was not clear how many customers lost power, although the agency said the blackout lasted more than an hour.
“Once the outages began, our dispatcher contacted (Cal-ISO) to inform them that the downsizing action had taken place, and then was notified that there was a misunderstanding of the initial order,” the NCPA said.
With the state nearing outage, Governor Gavin Newsom first launched a wireless emergency alert system at 5:45 p.m. that sent messages to 27 million cell phones urging them to turn off or reduce nonessential power.
Within moments, Mainzer said, there was a drop of more than 2,000 megawatts, bringing the country back “over the edge.”
“It required a very high signal,” Mainzer said. “I think they now realize we’re not messing around. This is a real problem. And we need a real response.”
Newsom, speaking in Beverly Hills, said he’s discussed pressing that button over the past four to five days. He eventually decided to test it and concluded that it was a game-changer, although he was reluctant to use it too often because he feared it would weaken its efficacy.
With residents and businesses under the eighth consecutive day of a “flexible alert” requesting energy conservation between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., a similar response was needed on Wednesday.
Western nations struggle through one of September’s hottest and longest heat waves on record. Temperatures began to rise last week, and the National Weather Service warned that dangerous temperatures could persist into Friday, despite some slight moderation.
Nearly 54 million people were exposed to warnings of rising temperatures across the West as temperature records were broken in many regions.
Sacramento, the California state capital, hit an all-time high on Tuesday at 116 degrees (46.7 degrees Celsius), breaking a 97-year record. Salt Lake City hit an all-time high on Wednesday at 107 degrees (41.6 degrees Celsius). Reno, Nevada, broke records for the hottest temperature ever recorded in September, according to the National Weather Service.
Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the past three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and more frequent and destructive of wildfires. In the past five years, California has experienced the largest and most devastating fires in the state’s history.
In the northern plains, an unusually late heat wave peaked on Wednesday after a long string of scorching days.
Along the main thoroughfare in downtown Billings, where the temperature hit a daily record of 102 degrees (39 degrees Celsius), Gale Spotted Bear, a native of the Black Feet Preserve, sought shelter from the scorching heat in the shade of a vacant building.
“This year has been hotter than hell,” Spotted Bear said, adding that homeless people can be hit the hardest if they have nowhere to go. “It’s hard here.”
Newsom said the latest wave of high temperatures has surpassed anything California has experienced, including a heat wave in August 2020 that left power outages for two days.
“We got rid of all the old game manuals regarding our scheduling (for) worst-case scenarios,” Newsom said. “Even the worst of the worst-case scenarios didn’t extend into a week like this.”
Copyright © 2022 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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