(Bloomberg) – California Governor Gavin Newsom has called for an investigation into why officials did not anticipate the need for rolling blackouts that have driven millions of people into darkness.
In the past 72 hours, the state has instituted the first straight outages since the 2001 energy crisis to protect a system that is plagued by an issue of demand for air conditioning during a heat wave. The region’s electricity system operator warned of more rotating outages by Wednesday with temperatures forecast to reach 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees Celsius) in some parts of the state.
“These blackouts, which occurred without prior warning or sufficient time for preparation, are unacceptable and unavoidable by the nation’s largest and most innovative state,” Newsom said in a statement.
Part of the problem is the rapid shift of California away from natural gas. About 9 gigawatts of gas production, enough to power 6.8 million homes, have retired over the past five years as the state increasingly turns to sustainability, according to BloombergNEF. That leaves fewer options as the sun goes down and solar production grows.
Normally, California can import enough power from neighboring states if supplies are tight. But the sprawling heatwave blankets of the American West are sending power plants to the hill across the region.
“California is in a tight spot,” said BNEF analyst Brian Bartholomew. “It simply came to our notice then. And the storage that will help should not have come online yet. “
Newsom, a Democrat, also signed a mandate that temporarily allows users and utilities to use backup generators to hide the need for blackouts.
By 10 a.m. local time, it was already 93 degrees in Sacramento. With temperatures rising, the demand for power in the state is expected to reach more than 49,700 megawatts on Monday afternoon, just despite the record set in 2006. Electricity prices have more than doubled in the highest in five months.
Since Friday, millions of Californians have abruptly fallen into darkness with little notice, as utilities work to prevent the state from invading it. With Covid-19 still spreading, the powerless have a difficult choice between maintaining the heat at home and seeking relief elsewhere in a state that reports more infections than any other. These blackouts hit less than a year after utility companies in California deliberately reduced power to millions to keep their electric lines from burning fire during unusually strong wind storms – all extreme weather events are more likely to be caused by climate change.
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The relentless heat is beginning to take a physical toll on California’s power system. Transformers – the metal cylinders located above the power poles – can function and catch fire if they do not cool down at night. And temperatures in some parts of Southern California will likely stay overnight into the low 80s. During a deadly, 10-day hot wave in 2006, the state utilities lost more than 1,500 of these devices, with each service breaking out one quarter in the process.
The heat wave that grips the West Coast comes from an idiosyncratic, high-pressure system that has parked itself across the Great Basin that spans Nevada and other western states. It essentially acts as a cover that finds hot air, and there are no indications that it will increase anytime soon.
Such phenomena, sometimes called hotheads, get worse as the Earth’s climate changes. As the planet warms, the contrast between the heat at the equator and the cold at the pole decreases. This lowers the power of the jet stream, which could otherwise shake the rain out of the way. It explains in part why extreme heat has blanketed regions around the world in recent weeks.
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Extreme weather has taken a big toll on electrical networks in recent weeks. Earlier this month, millions of people lost power across the American Midwest after a wall of lightning, hail and deadly wind tore a trail of ruin from central Iowa to Chicago. Days earlier, Tropical Storm Isaias darkened millions of homes from the Carolinas to Connecticut.
Soaring temperatures have already broken records in California. According to the National Weather Service, Los Angeles International Airport broke a daily record of 93 degrees, breaking a previous height of 85 set in 1994. Death Valley reached 130 degrees for the first time since 1913. If this was validated, the weather service said, it would drop as the hottest temperature in August there ever.
The California strikes began on Friday, when an energy plant was functioning just as the heat sent demand for electricity to a height. Network companies ordered utilities to cut costs and about 2 million people lost service over the course of four hours. A similar episode took place on Saturday, when an estimated 352,500 homes and businesses went dark shortly after.
“I’m pretty shocked about this – I think everyone is,” said Michael Wara, director of Stanford University’s climate and energy policy program. “This needs to be addressed with a lot of attention and quickly.”
Before Friday, California’s network industry had suffered no rolling blackouts since the 2001 energy crisis, when hundreds of thousands of customers were driven into darkness, power prices reached record levels and the state’s largest electric utility went bankrupt. (It went bankrupt a second time last year in the face of crippling arson commitments.)
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