California’s power grid started showing a little stress this week as a persistent hot spell continues to bake the region.
The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) — the agency that manages the state’s power supplies — issued two warnings indicating that the gap between power supply and demand is getting tighter.
Energy emergency alert watches — the lowest alert level — indicate all available resources are either committed or forecast to be in-use at some point in the day.
Both alerts were issued because of concern about supply and demand during the late afternoon and early evening peak usage time.
“Typically for us to really run into issues, it has to be hot, not only in the interior part of California but in the big cities in Southern California and the Bay Area,” said Elliot Mainzer, the president and CEO of CAISO. “It’s been warm but not super hot there.”
This stretch of hot weather has not matched the intensity of a September 2022 heat wave which spawned 10 consecutive "flex alerts."
CAISO issues flex alerts when the agency finds there is not enough supply to meet demand and the grid needs customers to shed load quickly.
The power supply situation is different this year.
California added 8,000 megawatts of new natural gas and renewable generating capacity this year.
There is more battery storage online which allows power officials to store electricity generated by solar panels in the middle of the day and then deploy that energy during peak demand time in the early evening.
California also has access to more regional hydropower, thanks to a wet winter.
Last year, a prolonged drought dried up the ability to generate electricity from water stored behind dams.
But power officials still have concerns about the next couple of months.
San Diego’s monthly average temperature is hottest in September with August and October close behind.
Santa Ana wind conditions, which pull hot, dry air from the desert, can create conditions for a firestorm.
Heat, wind and wildfires are a witch’s brew power managers fear.
“It’s really the combination of everything happening simultaneously that we worry the most about and that we have to pay the most attention too,” Mainzer said.
Climate researchers say heat waves will be more intense and last longer as the planet warms in coming years.
People continue putting a lot of climate-altering emissions in the air and that locks in a warming cycle for years.
“One of the tyrannies of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere is that CO2 (carbon dioxide) for example is very long lived,” said Dan Cayan, a climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “And what has been deposited there so far is going to be a problem that resides in the atmosphere for decades.”
Federal officials are already predicting that this July will be the hottest month on record, globally.
