Posted on 09/01/2007 2:10:32 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
About 2,600 people were without power Saturday as the city's electrical grid strained in the midst of a statewide heat wave, which was expected to bring triple-digit temperatures through the Labor Day weekend.
Highs were expected to reach 113 in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley and well over 100 in many other valley and desert areas of Southern California.
At the same time, unstable weather caused by monsoonal moisture from the south prompted concerns of sudden thunderstorms in valleys, mountains and deserts. A flash-flood watch was in effect through Saturday for those areas in San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties.
The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's power grid, said no major shortages were expected through Monday. Still, it urged customers to continue conserving electricity by setting air conditioning thermostats higher and waiting to use major appliances until after dark.
In Los Angeles, which has its own power system, blackouts were reported Friday night as demand overloaded some circuits. About 2,600 customers were still without electricity Saturday afternoon, most of them in the Eagle Rock area near downtown.
There was "tremendous strain" on electrical transmission equipment because nights remain hot and people were running air conditioners around the clock, said Joe Ramallo, a spokesman for the Department of Water and Power.
"I compare it to running a car at 100 mph for 24 hours," he said.
The DWP said its power load peaked at 6,107 megawatts at midafternoon Friday, second only to its all-time record peak of 6,165 megawatts set on July 24, 2006.
Around the state, dozens of cooling centers were open in parks, libraries, senior centers and county fairgrounds. The shelters were sparsely attended on Saturday and hospitals also reported few patients with heat-related problems, said Carol Singleton, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Emergency Services.
However, she urged people to check on vulnerable neighbors, such as senior citizens, to make sure they were getting enough water.
"That's really key, to look out for each other during this heat wave," she said.
In Central California, crews battling a two-month-old wildfire in Los Padres National Forest worried about hot and dry weather that could undo some of their work.
Highs were expected to reach 102 to 107 and coupled with low humidity, "you've got the mixture for extreme fire danger," fire spokesman Larry Comerford said. "We're on alert."
The fire was 97 percent contained and was expected to be fully surrounded on Sunday after scorching 240,207 acres or wilderness, or about 375 square miles.
Several other small fires also were burning in the forest. They were caused by lightning strikes that accompanied dry thunderstorms which hit the area last week. The largest two, at 200 and 30 acres, respectively, were burning in remote areas and no homes were threatened, Comerford said.
I-N-F-R-A-S-T-R-U-C-T-U-R-E
If the utilities need to build more infrastructure to supply enough electricity, I wish they’d get to work and quit telling folks to stop using their product.
It would seem a certain percentage of the DWP’s profits would be rolled back over into the business. That doesn’t seem to be happening.
Dude, it’s like sooo like hell around here.
Agreed . A greed .
Ontario is showing 107 with a high of 109 and they are running a Busch race in 3 hours or so and a Cup race tomorrow same time,,
Wow,, boil me a lobster..
http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USCA0806.html
We’ve actually had a rather mild summer this year, it’s only a balmy 85 here in NW FL.
So much for global warming.
Norm, what’s the temp in the Central Valley today?
Sounds like it... I don’t know the whole picture, but it would seem like sound buiness practices are not part of the equasion when it comes to the DWP. And it angers me when they start talking about rate surcharges to do what they should have already been doing. And that goes double when I see them spending funds on advertising for no other reason that public relations.
Only 2,600 people?
We’ve actually had a rather mild summer this year..
Yup,, same here, it’s about 90 now, humidity is back down,, meanwhile SoCal is cooking.. I’m ready for a dip in the pool myself. . ;-)
I know I know,, It’s early in the afternoon still too.. maybe 4-5 O’clock that number will go up..
Fresno,, 103
Stockton 99
Merced 100
Modesto 101
San Jose a measly 90
Bummer.
Here in Memphis, I have had 6 short outages in the past 3 days - 3 Thursday, 1 Friday, and two today (so far). None exceeded 3 minutes, but two of them caused my Xerox printer to run a cleaning cycle and dump about $20 worth of ink each time.
I called the “reliability” office to register a complaint yesterday, but obviously without any result so far.
(Bakersfield is my home town.)
It’s 97 here now, was 107 yesterday...
Jump in the pool at sunset. You have very warm water and cooler air to dry you off when you choose to leave the pool. Tell your wife to throw some ribs and drumsticks on the grille while you splash around. And tell her to put BBQ sauce on them from the pool. And tell her to make macaroni salad for your buddies. Finally, tell her to HAND a cold beer to you. In the pool.
Power outages are the inevitable result of California environmentalism. No thanks. They can have it.
Same here. I have a 5kw diesel generator that runs all the essentials very nicely.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
104 now...
Right after I typed that message we had a brown-out which fried the power supply on my computer.
The power came back on after about a minute, so I didn't need to use my generator, but I did need to replace the power supply on my computer. $50. Bummer.
(actually $55 because I had to pay my kid to put it in) :-)
I have a 40kW propane powered standby (fully automatic) generator.
We had a record heatwave in Arizona.
Gee, California, and “we don’t need to plan for more power needs in the future” sounded so good twenty-five years ago...
Nicer than what I've got, but I only have about $1600 wrapped up in my setup.
I have one of those APC backup power supplies. Cheap insurance for that type of situation. It also lets me save what I'm working on and shut down my computer.
My son has (had) one of those on his computer.
The brown out fried his battery back up. His power supply was fine, but his backup burned up.
Cest la vie.
I got my generator new with a 200 Amp automatic trasnsfer switch, delivered for $8,800 off of eBay a few years ago...
I thought that was pretty reasonable. I don’t know what they cost now.
Back in the 70s, I was on jury duty with a panel that included an engineer for DWP. At lunch I asked him what their program was for shutting down their turbines for maintenance to keep the system running smoothly for I was in charge of all the emergency generator engine maintenance at Wadsworth V.A. Hospital in West L.A.
He just smiled and said that they don’t shut down anything, they wait for the equipment to shut down on its own and switch to backup systems on the grid or monitor the peaking units.
It’s all deferred maintenance with these guys.
Well, I don’t understand that way of thinking. It seems to me to be a recipe for disaster. I’m sure you’d agree that rotating units would be a better way to go, say keeping 10 of 11 operating while the down unit could be inspected and repaired or upgraded as needed.
Thanks for the report. I appreciate it.
*wipes off the drool*
Nice! I've got a 4kw genset that is enough to run my well, fridge(not at the same time) and fans on the fireplace. Ever since I bought it, no outages. Now I need to replace all the gas, even with stabil it's getting old after a year.
Propane is the way to go because the it doesn’t go bad with time. In addition it burns much cleaner significantly reducing the mantenance on the engine. I used a buried 500 gal tank so there’s no tank visable and it will go many days without refilling.
I thought the cost was very reasonable at $8,800 with the automatic transfer switch and delivered.
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