California's Last-Ditch Effort to Avoid Blackouts: Texting Consumers. Way to go California!
Entering the critical evening hours of a crushing heat wave Tuesday night, California power grid officials were down to their last recourse to avoid rolling blackouts: customer conservation. It worked. Consumers heeded officials’ pleas to cut power use on Tuesday, which included an unprecedented text message to 27 million Californians, and the state narrowly avoided its first controlled power outages since a heat wave in 2020. California again avoided blackouts on Wednesday night and has so far managed to keep the lights on amid record-breaking temperatures in many parts of the state.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said his administration debated for days whether they should use the text message alert. By 5 p.m. on Tuesday, officials had determined there wouldn’t be enough power to meet demand and warned consumers of imminent blackouts. The text was sent around 5:55 p.m., and within 45 minutes there was a roughly 2,600-megawatt reduction in usage.
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The text alert was the latest effort by the state to balance plans to rapidly green its grid while meeting rising energy demands. A California law passed in 2018 requires the state to decarbonize its power grid by 2045, and it has been adding more solar, battery storage and wind power while shutting down some natural-gas-powered plants. But the transition has left the state short of power during periods of acute demand, such as this week’s heat wave, leading officials to ask or pay large businesses, and increasingly, residents, to cut back. It also has had to rely on natural-gas backup generation, and drought has reduced hydroelectric supplies.
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Relying on customers’ conservation efforts is a practice little used since the energy crisis of the 1970s. Americans have been used to years of relatively cheap and reliable energy. But this summer both California and Texas have urged consumers to cut back. In Texas, the grid operator asked businesses and residents to trim power use during a July heat wave.
The decision by Mr. Newsom and grid officials to tap consumer conservation came as scorching temperatures and record power demand Tuesday nearly overwhelmed weeklong efforts by the state’s grid operator to keep the lights on and the electric grid stable. At least three utilities in Northern California reported cutting power to customers, but the state’s grid operator said it didn’t order rotating power outages and that the blackouts resulted from confusion over its emergency alert levels.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-avoids-blackouts-by-texting-convincing-consumers-to-slash-power-use-11662658114 (subscription)
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