California residents are once again struggling with blackouts after people lost electricity during a heat wave this past weekend.
California residents are once again struggling to keep the lights on after as many as 50,000 people lost electricity in a heat wave this past weekend that caused the famed Hollywood Bowl to cancel a concert due to the power outage. [emphasis, links added]
The Hollywood Reporter noted:
The Hollywood Bowl was forced to cancel its Sept. 8 show due to a power outage.
The venue posted on its website that the concert, headlined by Vance Joy, had been called off.
The Reporter said that it was unclear what caused the outage, but KABC-7 blamed the heat:
The heat was affecting electrical equipment as utilities scrambled to dispatch crews.
That left many thousands of people without working air conditioning or refrigeration during one of the hottest days of the year.
…
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power crews were working as quickly as they could, restoring power to some 50,000 customers. But the wait can be miserable.
The weekend’s power failures, which began as early as Friday, marked at least the third time in the past five years that Californians have had to endure power outages in warm weather — and without the high winds that sometimes trigger power utilities to shut off electricity for fear of sparking fires with downed transmission lines.
During one such power outage in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) warned Californians that they would have to “sober up” about green energy.
Yet within weeks, Newsom resumed his green energy push, announcing that new sales of gas-powered vehicles would be banned by 2035. (He admitted earlier this year that California still faces blackouts despite investing in new battery capacity.)
Newsom has not issued an advisory to California residents in the current heat wave, which has lasted several days.
The California “Flex Alert” page showed that the electricity grid overall has capacity, despite the localized problems.
Still, California faces the persistent risk of electricity shortages as it moves toward a goal of “net zero” emissions by 2045 and a 100% carbon-free electricity grid.
In practice, that means closing fossil fuel plants and relying on wind and solar energy. The state only has one operational nuclear power plant left, which remains at risk of closure.
Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley, writing in the opinion pages of the Journal on Monday, noted:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blamed Friday’s outages on “extreme heat.” The real culprit: the state’s climate policies. As the Golden State plunges into darkness, the rest of the country could follow.
…
All of this is why Los Angeles’s Office of Public Accountability this summer recommended the city scale back its 100% renewable goal for 2035, warning that its public utility risked adopting costly battery technology that could become outdated. This doesn’t worry Democrats in Sacramento, who have directed utilities to add more batteries and subsidize them for homeowners.
A cynic might suspect they’re cheering for outages, hoping blackouts will induce people to buy batteries. A pragmatist would buy fossil-fuel-powered generators before they, too, are run out of the state.
Democrats, instead of learning from California’s cautionary example, have adopted it in other states — notably in Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota.
The vice presidential candidate signed legislation pushing local utility companies to achieve carbon-free power generation by 2040 — five years earlier than California, and with much less annual sunshine.
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