Electronics companies in Arizona on Wednesday called on customers again to reduce energy consumption late in the day to reduce the potential for blackouts, and the call became more urgent when a wildfire near Roosevelt Lake turned off a power line.
Arizona Public Service Co. and Tucson Electric Power Co. had asked customers to save from 3pm to 8pm on Tuesday and repeated the call on Wednesday. Salt River Project joined them Wednesday because of the damage from the fire.
Weather reports Thursday show some parts of the Southwest cooling a few degrees. That should eliminate the need for enforcement requests in Arizona, although officials said they make day-to-day decisions.
During the noon and evening hours, customers were encouraged to turn thermostats no lower than 78 degrees, turn off unused lights, and use delay with large appliances including pool pumps until later.
SRP had not joined other utilities on Tuesday to request conservation, but that changed when a transmission line importing power to the Phoenix area was taken out of service by the Salt Fire in the Tonto National Forest.
SRP spokesman Scott Harelson said smoke from the wild power caused the line to be cut off. Dense wildfire smoke can cause power lines to arc. SRP was able to get the transmission line back into service Wednesday night, he said.
“That’s good news, but there’s still a lot of smoke coming out of this fire so the line could easily push back,” Harelson said.
The power line that was hit brings power from the Coronado and Springerville coal plants in northeastern Arizona to SRP customers in the Phoenix area.
SRP said the rest of its system is running normally, but that rolling blackouts may be needed to meet electricity demand during the burning afternoon.
SRP asked customers to stay up to 21 hours, an hour later than APS.
Rolling blackouts, which SRPs refer to as “rotating outages”, are used to reduce power to thousands of customers simultaneously for 20 to 30 minutes, and then refund their power and scrap another block of customers.
They are used to prevent broader, uncontrolled outages that can result when customer demand is greater than power on the out of operation of power plants.
The unusual call for customer retention in Arizona came on Tuesday first when California utilities asked the same.
Utilities in California warned millions of people this week that they are facing potential blackouts because the demand for electricity is so high.
California residents heeded the call Tuesday, cutting back on use enough to roll out blackouts as the state saw Friday and Saturday.
Blackouts caused by storms or accidents are common. And California has forced itself even during high winds to prevent sparking lines from igniting wildfires. But outages caused by utilities that do not have enough energy to supply customers are rare.
The supply-related outages Friday and Saturday in California were the first since the California energy crisis in 2000 and 2001.
SRP had to use rolling blackouts for about 65,000 customers in February 2011 when a severe free-flow problem caused problems in the West, including with multiple power plants the company runs across the state.
The situation was less difficult this week in Arizona. But utilities here said Tuesday that if they lose a major power plant like transmission line, there simply would not be enough power available on the market to make it up, so they asked customers to cut back.
Arizona also saw a “significant” reduction in power usage after APS and Tucson Electric Power Co. social media and news organizations used to ask customers to cut their usage Tuesday.
“I can say that it worked perfectly,” said APS spokesman Jim McDonald. “We quickly saw a change in how much energy customers were using in the 3-8pm window, and it made a significant difference.”
APS refused to share figures on how many megawatts to the demand for electricity were thrown in those hours because customers were asked to keep.
Tuesday was the first time since July 2004 that APS made such a request, and it was only done that year, because a critical piece of infrastructure exploded after it was damaged the previous month in a stake caused by a blue heron’s drops on electrical equipment.
TEP on Wednesday renewed its call for voluntary retention.
“While TEP does not sell energy to California, these circumstances have limited supplies and increased prices in the California and Arizona wholesale markets,” the company said in a news release. “TEP and other Arizona utilities rely on that market to supplement the resources we have secured to serve the energy needs of our own customers.”
McDonald said APS on Tuesday sold power to California, as well as Nevada, but only when the utility could do so without affecting Arizona customers.
He said all utilities are required to provide such assistance by national roster regulators.
“For APS, this means that we have that obligation if utilities in California, Nevada and New Mexico need it, and also that if we were in the same emergency situation, other utilities would come to our aid, if possible,” McDonald said.
While APS on Tuesday provided power to other utilities while asking their own customers to maintain, “there were also times when we did not have such an ability to provide emergency assistance because this jeopardized reliable service to our own customers. would, “he said.
“Importantly, we have not asked for voluntary maintenance by our customers to increase assistance to other utilities, but to maintain the margins for energy reserves with which we work, to be prepared for unplanned situations, such as loss of a generating unit or transmission line. “
He also said that revenue from such energy sales is passed on directly to APS customers, thereby reducing their costs.
Reach Reporter Ryan Randazzo at [email protected] or 602-444-4331. Follow him on Twitter @UtilityReporter.
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