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The California power grid operator urged residents to voluntarily conserve power for a second night in a row as extreme heat and a rapidly growing wildfire in southern Oregon have strained the city. state power supply Saturday.
The operator of the California independent system has issued its Flex Alert until 9 p.m., calling for outages in an effort to maintain the stability of the state’s electricity grid and prevent continued blackouts.
California ISO officials on Friday said conditions on the state’s power grid were “already a challenge” when triple-digit temperatures were recorded statewide and demand for electricity increased. Then, on Friday afternoon, the Bootleg Fire, the blaze that burns in southern Oregon, began threatening the transmission lines that supply California with electricity.
At a press conference Saturday afternoon, ISO officials in California said 5,500 megawatts of electricity had been lost because lines to the California Oregon Intertie were taken offline. A megawatt typically powers a few hundred homes, with California’s total demand expected to peak at around 40,000 megawatts on Saturday, according to the California ISO.
As of Saturday afternoon, the Bootleg Fire burned 76,897 acres.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Saturday evening to free up the state’s energy capacity. The directive was based on a similar ordinance signed on Friday, which suspended licensing requirements to allow the use of back-up power generation, allowing the use of auxiliary ship engines to augment the power grid.
State officials urged California residents to set their thermostat to 78 degrees, avoid using major appliances, close window coverings to keep their homes cool, use fans, turn off all lights that are not needed and to unplug unused appliances.
Lauren Hernández is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ByLHernandez
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