![]() Electricity started flowing in from other states, and from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which operates its own independent grid. as they were Friday morning, although they could have done more if not for a drought made worse by climate change. Hydropower dams were generating five times as much power by 7 p.m. At times, natural gas accounted for nearly two-thirds of the state’s electricity. The gas fleet went to work, generating more and more power - and planet-warming emissions - throughout the afternoon, before starting to plateau around 5 p.m. ![]() To replace that solar, CAISO and its market participants pulled out all the stops. Solar energy would ultimately fall from a high of 11,590 megawatts on Friday morning to a low of eight megawatts at 8:20 p.m., before going away entirely. It was a few hours later, as the sun slowly disappeared beyond the Pacific, that things would get dicey. There was still plenty of solar power flooding the grid, so peak demand came and went around 5:35 p.m. All told, California was looking at a 5,500-megawatt hole. Grid officials also had to limit the amount of power running north to south across the state line on another giant electricity cord known as the Pacific DC Intertie, to account for the possibility of that line suddenly going down. And the situation was actually worse than that. And then a few minutes later, the third line went,” Rothleder said.Ĭalifornia suddenly found itself short about 4,000 megawatts of imported energy - nearly 10% of Friday’s peak demand. “Within a few minutes, the second line went. The heavy smoke acted as a conductor, interfering with the electric current. A few minutes after they asked for Newsom’s help, a power line that’s part of the California-Oregon Intertie was knocked out by the fire. Gavin Newsom’s office delivered that proclamation around 4:30 p.m., allowing fossil-fueled power plants to produce more air pollution than would normally be allowed and suspending limits on portable generators, among other steps.ĬAISO officials were glad they didn’t wait. “We actually decided the risk was great enough, we should probably get in place an emergency proclamation,” Rothleder said in a phone interview with The Times. Still, they felt the situation was under control - except for the Bootleg fire. ![]() You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
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