Published on August 15, 2020
Last night’s power outage affected the entire state, with hundreds of thousands losing power temporarily. Early yesterday evening, the California Independent System Operator (CA ISO), which manages the statewide power grid, issued a Stage 2 emergency because of increased demand, warning that outages might be necessary. That was quickly increased to a Stage 3 emergency, ordering utilities without warning to implement rotating power outages. An hour later, the grid had stabilized, and utilities began restoring 1,000 megawatts of electricity.
AMP, Alameda’s own public electric utility, has to do its share in these situations, and when instructed by CA ISO, started implementing procedures in place to drop customers in waves. There are many factors involved in load dropping that must be balanced (for example, is a hospital affected?) in deciding who and when customers get dropped. Here’s a good article on the outages last night: https://www.kqed.org/news/11833521/californias-extreme-heat-wave-prompts-rolling-power-outages
Here’s a look at the daily outlook for today from CA ISO: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx
You can subscribe to alerts from the grid operator here: http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/Default.aspx
And subscribe to City alerts here: http://www.acalert.org/
Public Works Department