The best thing our customers can do to help prevent going into that stage iii category is to conserve as much energy as possible. You heard it right there, conserve energy. That is going to be the motto during this heatwave we are all dealing with across the bay area. Tonights power emergency is over for now after a series of rolling outages around Northern California this evening that helped stabilize the grid. This started around 6 30 with an order from kauai so. The independent system operator manages the states power grid and it told utilities, like pg e, to shed powerlines because of unusually high demand. Pg e explained in a tweet saying there was strain on the power grid due to excess heat. Pg e began rotating Power Outages at the direction of the state grid operator. 200 to 250,000 customers were affected for about an hour each. This map is from pg es web shot. It shows a snapshot of the situation at 8 00 tonight. The red dots represent outages of 5000 or more, the orange dots
Rotating outages began getting underway. Most people have their power back on. While there will be no more rotating outages tonight, we are told, pg e is and ruling out the possibility that it might happen this weekend. Its why they are asking customers to cut back and conserve energy. We would also encourage customers, if they are able to delay in later in the evening household chores like running the washing machine or their dishwasher, or even vacuuming. Just by avoiding those types of things, it will help us have the necessary supply to meet the demand. Californians came accustomed , so to speak, to rolling outages in 2001 when great managers imposed repeated blackouts to deal with an electricity crisis then. This map from pg es website shows a snapshot of the situation around 8 00 tonight. The red dots represent outages of 5000 or more. The orange dots are 500 or more pg e customers. Not easy dealing with this kind of power outage when its so hot. You need air conditioning. But it