California Urges Power Conservation Amid Heat Wave

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California’s power grid operator called for voluntary energy conservation on Thursday as the state sweltered under a heat wave that has blanketed the West and brought dangerously high temperatures to many areas.

The California Independent System Operator issued a Flex Alert for Thursday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., urging people to set their thermostats to 78 degrees or higher and avoid using washers, dishwashers and other major appliances.

While the electrical supply was tight, CEO Elliot Mainzer said actual blackouts were unlikely. But he added that could change as temperatures spiked and urged people to heed the Flex Alert.

“Californians have stepped up many times before when asked to pitch in and I’m confident they will do so,” Mainzer said.

During another heat spell last August, the state saw two days of rotating power outages that affected more than 200,000 people. They were the first such blackouts since 2001.

Power officials said the electrical grid has seen upgrades in power storage and transmission since then, including adding about 3,500 megawatts of capacity _ in general enough to power some 2.6 million homes. That includes 2,000 megawatts worth of battery storage that could be crucial when solar power generation tails off after dark.

Temperatures in the 80s and 90s were expected up and down the state, with triple-digit highs forecast in deserts, some mountains, non-coastal valley and inland areas, including the state’s agricultural Central Valley.

The National Weather Service warned of “dangerously hot, potentially life-threatening temperatures” through Saturday in the San Joaquin Valley.

A heat advisory was issued through Friday night for much of the San Francisco Bay Area and several counties announced they were opening cooling centers.

The heat was expected to ease only slightly heading into Sunday, the official first day of summer.

The heat was due to a dome of high pressure that has covered the West. Oppressive daytime highs have been followed by very warm nights, although a coastal eddy swirling low clouds over Southern California brought enough cooling Wednesday for forecasters to reduce some excessive-heat warnings to advisories around the Los Angeles region.

“Heat waves are getting worse in the West because the soil is so dry” from the region’s megadrought, said Park Williams, a University of California, Los Angeles climate and fire scientist who has calculated that soil in the western half of the nation is the driest it has been since 1895. “We could have two, three, four, five of these heat waves before the end of the summer.”

The heat wave comes in the midst of a drought that has dried up vegetation, increasing fire danger. There have been a number of small wildfires around the state this week but the state avoided the kind of fierce gusts that drove last year’s devastating blazes.

Even so, people should be careful, warned Pam Temmermand, a fire prevention specialist with the state fire agency’s unit in Morgan Hill in the Silicon Valley.

People shouldn’t use outdoor power tools or lawn mowers that could hit rocks and create sparks, and those towing trailers should make sure the chains aren’t dragging on the road, she told the Bay Area News Group.

“All it takes is one spark,” Temmermand said.

If there was any good news about the heat wave, it meant more business for restaurants, bowling alleys and other air-conditioned spots that just won state permission to abandon their coronavirus-inspired capacity restrictions.

Customers flocked to the Westfield Santa Anita shopping mall below the foothills northeast of Los Angeles, and they were “feeling, `Gosh, I can get out of those 100-plus temperatures,”’ shopping center management executive Molly Unge told KCBS-TV.

Gabriel Mora, who owns an ice delivery business in Los Angeles and also sells snow cones, told the station that his business also was booming.

“It’s been really crazy from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and still I get after-hour deliveries from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.,” he said. “It’s nonstop.”

About the photo: Gerry Huddleston of Santa Rosa, Calf. cools off in the very shallow water of the Russian River, Wednesday, June 16, 2021 at the Veterans Memorial Beach in Healdsburg, Calif. An unusually early and long-lasting heat wave brought more triple-digit temperatures Wednesday to a large swath of the U.S. West, raising concerns that such extreme weather could become the new normal amid a decades-long drought. (Kent Porter/The Press Democrat via AP)