California has power outages for the first time in 19 years – and everyone is blamed

SACRAMENTO – The exact root of the power outages in California is still unclear as more power outages are looming, which has everyone pointing fingers.

Energy experts on Monday cited a litany of potential causes for the spinning blackouts that affected hundreds of thousands of California residents on Friday and Saturday night: soaring demand, inadequate transmission, overreliance on renewables and the foray of new energy providers. which do not have the same obligation to maintain reserves as traditional public services.

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As California braced for another round of blackouts Monday night, the state’s grid operator waited for a second night in a row, citing cooler-than-expected weather and widespread conservation. It also came when Gov. Gavin Newsom asked all of the state’s electricity players about why the blackouts happened and were backfired from frustrated residents.

California has suffered planned power outages in recent years as a wildfire prevention measure. But it was the first round of power outages related to the supply of the Golden State since 2001, when Enron and other energy traders manipulated the California market.

Earlier Monday, the independent California system operator blamed Friday’s blackouts on “high heat and increased demand for electricity.” Still, some energy experts noted that demand was not particularly above normal, as is typical for weekends, and CAISO predicted that it would have sufficient reserves for 80% of the grid. Californian he manages.

“What’s strange about what happened is that they were adequate until they weren’t,” said Michael Wara, director of the climate and energy program at the University of Stanford and member of the State Commission on the Costs and Recovery of Catastrophic Wildfires. “It appears that some power plants, for whatever reason, have not been able to meet the commitments to provide reserves and also to provide power.”

Because Friday’s blackout began around 6:30 p.m., when solar power is dwindling and gas-fired power plants are increasing, gas is likely the immediate culprit, Wara said. “The timing of all of this strongly suggests problems with the gas works,” he said.

California could increase maximum wholesale prices or increase penalties for non-performance to encourage plant maintenance, he said.

CAISO CEO Steve Berberich said on Monday that a power plant of unspecified fuel and size on Friday “tripped”, causing the facility to be taken offline. Although details were not disclosed, certain types of natural gas power plants can struggle in hot conditions, and gas units are usually the only ones with such a capacity.

Business groups, in turn, were quick to blame renewable energy providers; Saturday’s blackout came after 1,000 megawatts of wind power and a 470 megawatt gas plant briefly went offline.

“Hot weather and an overcast day shouldn’t be able to shut down the world’s fifth largest economy,” said Lance Hastings, president of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, in a statement. “While we support California’s renewable energy goals, we absolutely need system redundancy that allows us to continue to operate and manufacture products for our residents and the world. “

Others have been more explicit about their support for gas, including an executive at NRG, which owns gas plants and other energy resources in states across the country – including 4,000 megawatts of gas and solar power in California.

Travis Kavulla, former member of CAISO’s Western Energy Market governing body and NRG’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said that the ability of gas to deliver electricity consistently around the clock ” proves that, at least for now, it is an essential resource “.

Also playing the blame game: Berberich, who said renewables are not to blame, but CAISO has been warning for several years that the PUC has not required utilities to have enough reserves ready for them. extreme events.

Meanwhile, PUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper suggested that CAISO had mismanaged the situation. She said neither investor-owned utilities nor community choice aggregators were at fault. Both “have secured the necessary resources to meet the forecast,” she said. “The question we are grappling with is why certain resources were not available.”

And former PUC president Loretta Lynch, who served as agency president during the 2000-01 power crisis, criticized CAISO on Monday for not being transparent about what ultimately led to the power outages. She argued that the utilities have sufficient capacity, including reserves, to meet demand. Lynch and Kavulla both said not all CAISO data is archived, which has led observers to price screenshots and other web pages for preservation.

CAISO is the ultimate decision-maker on issues of managing investor-owned utility networks, as the operator has visibility into their combined infrastructure and how electrons are transported across California and across state lines. CAISO is one of several independent grid operators and regional transmission organizations across the country, which follow reliability standards set by a non-profit governance body with respect to reserve margins and other criteria.

“ISO doesn’t know how to run the network. They can’t keep the lights on when there’s a lot of power,” Lynch said. She suspected that, as during the crisis of her day caused by Enron, so-called electricity “planners” – or intermediaries between utilities and generators – did not always submit accurate logs of when and how much electricity. will be delivered, which has sometimes resulted in market manipulation. In one extreme example, Enron traders in the late 1990s and early 2000s forced factories to go offline and created artificial supply shortages.

“What about the network operator who is doing their job and running a market that doesn’t manipulate, operates a network that doesn’t blacken out because it won’t call on reserves? The question is, why didn’t they? ”Lynch asked. She said the investigations led by Newsom on Monday into CAISO and state energy agencies should be conducted by an entity independent of market players with subpoena power to make the data from the state fully public. network operator.

A renewable energy advocate said the PUC should do more to promote voluntary conservation programs, which he says have halved in the past five years.

“I don’t think we know enough about all the details, but we do know what we have is a dearth of demand response – this is a direct responsibility of PUC – and a dearth of new purchases. , that’s on them, “said V John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies.

The head of a business group representing all types of generators highlighted several factors, including the general problem of solar power intermittency, but also simultaneous heat waves across the West that have prevented California import electricity.

“There is just less energy in the system to be distributed among the different regions,” said Jan Smutny-Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association. “That’s normally not a problem, but when it’s hot it is.”

One of the victims of the latest round of power outages in California said Newsom needs to prioritize reliability, but doesn’t have to sacrifice the state’s clean energy goals. It could increase energy storage, for example, in addition to conserving gas power plants.

“At the end of the day, people don’t want the lights to go out,” former Gov. Gray Davis said. “People also want a carbon-free future. Sometimes these two aspirations conflict. A smarter approach, in my opinion, is to have the horsepower you need in reserve, albeit somewhat carbon-based, to keep the lights on. “

Newsom launched an investigation on Monday and avoided pointing the finger at one factor in particular, pledging to continue to pursue the state’s low-carbon targets while improving reliability.

“We are not backing down on this commitment, quite the contrary,” he said. “But in the process of transition, in the process of shutting down, naturally, the desire and the need to close polluting gas plants, in the desire to move from the old to the new in this transition, and the need to shut them down down, comes the need for more self-confidence. “

Still, a political strategist who advised former Davis in his handling of the 2000-01 energy crisis said he should step up his rhetoric against the oft-accused Pacific Gas & Electric, despite the lack of evidence that the utility played a role in the weekend. breakdowns.

PG&E pointed out over the weekend that the shutdowns were the responsibility of CAISO and tried to distinguish them from forest fire related shutdowns. “These outages are not public safety power outages, which are called under specific conditions of high fire risk, and they are not related to any issues with PG&E equipment or its ability to deliver power. energy locally, ”the company said in a statement.

“I’ve seen this movie before, and I just think Newsom needs to keep talking about how we’re restructuring this delivery system in PG&E territory,” said Garry South, who was Davis’ policy adviser. “One of the ways he buys himself time on this is to pick up on the theme that PG&E is a proven bad player and that the state needs to seriously think about what we’re doing with this utility and what we do in this field of service to protect consumers. and, frankly, protecting people’s lives. ”