California again declared a power-grid emergency Wednesday after making it through the worst of a heat wave without calling for blackouts Tuesday evening.
(Bloomberg) — California again declared a power-grid emergency Wednesday after making it through the worst of a heat wave without calling for blackouts Tuesday evening.
With temperatures still high, the state’s grid operator said emergency measures will be in effect from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. local time, and is asking residents and businesses to reduce power consumption.
Excessive heat warnings stretch from the Oregon border, across the state and into neighboring Nevada and Arizona, driving up demand for power to run air conditioners. In Southern California, Burbank may reach 109 Fahrenheit (42.7 Celsius), which would be at least a high for the date, and Riverside could get to 109, according to the National Weather Service.
Electricity demand is expected to reach 51 gigawatts at about 4:45 p.m., according to the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the power grid. That’s just short of the all-time high of 52 gigawatts reached Tuesday evening, Caiso said.
That prompted the agency to implement its highest-level energy emergency Tuesday evening, warning that rolling blackouts may be needed. While the grid operator didn’t need to take that step, some local utilities cut power anyway.
In declaring the lowest of its three emergency levels for Wednesday, the agency is anticipating “an energy deficiency” even with every available power plant in operation, and is encouraging people to voluntarily curtail energy use.
The heat is expected to slip, but only slightly, for the next few days.
“It is going to stay hot through Friday but not as extreme as we saw yesterday,” David Rowe, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Wednesday. “It will be 105 to 110, so we won’t say it’s cooler — just not as hot.”
Downtown Sacramento reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday, an all-time high in records going back to 1849, beating the old mark of 114 set in 1925, and Stockton tied its all-time high at 115. Across California and the US West “a slew of records were set yesterday,” said Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center. Sacramento is forecast to reach 109 later Wednesday.
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As power demand surged Tuesday evening, the state issued emergency alerts via cell phone in several counties asking for immediate power conservation. Demand immediately plunged in response, according to grid data. Emergency measures were finally lifted at about 9 p.m. local time.
All-time highs are unusual. Many temperature records are simply for a specific date, so reaching a new record marks an extreme. Santa Rosa, Napa, Livermore, Redwood City, San Jose, and King City all set or tied their hottest temperatures ever on Tuesday, according to the weather service.
The prospect of outages underscores how grids have become vulnerable in the face of extreme weather as they transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. California has aggressively closed natural-gas power plants in recent years, leaving the state increasingly dependent on solar farms that go dark late in the day just as electricity demand peaks. At the same time, the state is enduring the Southwest’s worst drought in 1,200 years, sapping hydropower production.
Clouds and moisture filtering in across the West from Hurricane Kay, now off Mexico’s Baja California coast, will help cool things down, Rowe said. In addition, a large high pressure system that has been allowing the heat to build across the West will start to break down by the weekend, Oravec said.
By Sunday, many places across California and the West could be as much as 20 degrees cooler than they are now.
(Updates throughout)
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