CAISO Cautiously Optimistic Lights Will Stay On, But Rolling Blackouts Still Possible This Summer
CBS Sacramento 3 hrs ago Syndicated Local – CBS Sacramento
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) California energy officials are warning that the state is at risk of seeing rolling blackouts again this summer.
A California Independent System Operator (CAISO) report shows it is “cautiously optimistic” the lights will stay on in blistering heat.
But, the agency continues to see potential challenges in meeting demand during extreme heatwaves.
Last summer, more than 800,000 people lost power as CAISO conducted the first rolling blackouts since the state’s energy crisis two decades ago.
CAISO says they’re making changes, like adding supply, to try and prevent more blackouts amid rising temperatures.
Print article First they struck California, then Texas. Now blackouts are threatening the entire U.S. West as nearly a dozen states head into summer with too little electricity. From New Mexico to Washington, power grids are being strained by forces years in the making - some of them fueled by climate change, others by the fight against it. If a heat wave strikes the whole region at once, the rolling outages that darkened Southern California and Silicon Valley last August will have been previews, not flukes. “It’s really the same case in different parts of the West,” said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive officer of the California Independent System Operator, which runs most of the state’s grid. “It’s revealed competition for scarce resources that we haven’t seen for some time.”
Published: 13 May 2021, 13:44
By:
Andy Colthorpe
A 100MW, four-hour lithium battery storage resource came online at Alamitos, the site of a natural gas plant in California, to deal with peak demand management, at the beginning of this year. Image: AES.
A rapid and significant increase in battery storage capacity will be among factors contributing to an improved energy security position for California’s electricity networks this summer, but the grid is still vulnerable to stress during any extreme heatwaves.
The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which operates the grid for most of California and operates its electricity markets, gave its annual Summer Loads and Resources Assessment for 2021 yesterday.