The California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) and Southern California Edison are urging customers to step up their electricity conservation efforts as the state faces another day of critically short energy reserves and rolling blackouts. Cal-ISO attributed the latest energy shortfall to limited power imports and approximately 11,500 megawatts of California generation being offline or limited.
With a Stage 3 declaration—signifying that reserves are at less than 1.5 percent—Cal-ISO can receive emergency assistance from state and federal agencies or direct utilities to “drop load,” necessitating involuntary rotating outages for groups of customers across SCE’s service area until sufficient power reserve levels are achieved.
An Edison International company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of more than 11 million via 4.3 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within central, coastal and Southern California.
Cal-ISO, the nonprofit agency that manages 75% of California’s transmission power grid and secures power supplies for most of the state’s consumers, could call upon SCE and other utilities to activate their “interruptible” load curtailment programs under which customers, in exchange for lower rates, voluntarily interrupt their service during electrical emergencies.
