15,000 San Diego County Homes Without Power: Report

SAN DIEGO COUNTY, CA — Thousands of SDG&E customers were without power amid a raging wildfire and record-setting temperatures the San Diego County utility announced.

The utility blamed the outages on the Valley Fire in eastern San Diego County and excessive heat straining the power grid.

The outages are impacting approximately 15,000 customers, NBC San Diego reports.

The outages follow official warnings of another series of rolling blackout for the Golden State Sunday as a record breaking heat wave drove temperatures up and increased strain on the power grid. A Flex Alert was in place until 9 p.m. and officials urged residents to conserve to prevent the implementation of rolling outages.

"Based on the current forecast and without significant conservation, the ISO is planning for potential rotating outages between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. today," California ISO said in a Sunday afternoon news release. "California Consumers should prepare for the possibility of power interruptions."

Although thousands of customers in San Diego experienced power outages Sunday, they were not due to any blackouts issued by California ISO or SDG&E for conservation.

So far, no rotating outages have been ordered as the most critical time frame is between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. The agency warned that residents all over the state will need to conserve to avoid or limit outages.

Many of the outages experienced in San Diego were reported to be from the Valley Fire's impact on the system, which had scorched more than 5,000 acres Sunday and destroyed 10 homes in the Carveacre and Lawson Valley areas of eastern San Diego County.

The blaze effectively knocked the Sunrise Powerlink out of service, which has a 117-mile transmission line that connects renewable energy resources from Imperial Valley to San Diego, the San Diego Union Tribune reports.

The largest outage impacted 1,462 customers in the Casa De Oro Spring Valley regionSaturday evening, with many customers still without power Sunday. The circuit was out due to the Valley Fire after the circuit was damaged around 4 p.m. Saturday. It was estimated to be back up and running by 5 p.m. Saturday, the San Diego Union Tribune reports.

“California has always been the canary in the coal mine for climate change, and this weekend’s events only underscore that reality,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a news release Sunday. “Wildfires have caused system failures, while near record energy demand is predicted as a multi-state heat wave hits the West Coast for the second time in a matter of weeks."

Newsom said the state has already taken the following actions to free up capacity:

• Working with large commercial and public energy consumers to shift their energy usage away from peak hours;
• Ramping up appeals to Californians to flex their power, pre-cool their homes before noon and conserve energy from 3 p.m. onward;
• Partnering with third party energy producers to bring back-up energy generation resources online, from the State Water Project to LADWP and the state's investor-owned utilities;
• Asking the Navy and commercial ports to use on-ship electrical generation instead of pulling resources away from the grid.

CAISO declared a Stage 2 Emergency Saturday, when the state's power grid lost about 1,600 MW in resources to wildfire.

"Fires will continue to present difficult challenges today," CAISO said Sunday. "It’s uncertain when those resources will return to service, likely lowering supplies on the hottest day of the heatwave, and making rotating outages more possible."

The heat continues to hammer the Western United States, Sunday has been the hottest day of the heatwave for California so far.

"We are also expecting to see warm overnight temperatures across California with temperatures hitting their maximum along the coast early in the day prior to onshore flow picking up in the afternoon," CAISO said.

According to the agency, temperatures were expected to cool slightly but will still remain above average next week.