Sammy Roth
California suffered its first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years because energy planners didn’t take climate change into account and didn’t line up the right power sources to keep the lights on after sundown, according to a damning self-evaluation released on Tuesday by three state agencies.
The rotating power outages didn’t last long and affected only a small fraction of the state’s 40 million people. Just under half a million homes and businesses lost power for as little as 15 minutes and as long as 2.5 hours on August 14, with another 321,000 utility customers going dark for anywhere from eight to 90 minutes the following evening.
But officials should have been prepared for the climate-driven extreme heat that caused electricity demand to soar and briefly left the nation’s largest state without sufficient power supplies, the state’s Energy Commission, Independent System Operator and Public Utilities Commission acknowledged in a preliminary “root causeanalysis” demanded by Governor Gavin Newsom.
The immediate cause of the power shortages was the heat storm, which saw California experience four of its five hottest August days in the last 35 years, the analysis found.
Temperature records were shattered across the American West, limiting the Golden State’s ability to makeup for its energy deficit by importing electrons from other states.
State agencies failed to adequately plan for that type of heat event despite knowing how quickly the world is heating up, the report concluded. They also failed to direct electricity providers to buy sufficient power supplies to cover the evening hours when solar panels go offline.
And they created complex energy market mechanisms that masked the inadequacies. “The combination of these factors was an extraordinary event. But it is our responsibility and intent to plan for such events, which are becoming increasingly common in a world rapidly being impacted by climate change’’, wrote Independent System Operator President Elliot Mainzer, Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer and Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild. — dpa
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