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California residents are still braced for rolling blackouts this week as a late-summer heat wave grips the west coast and puts a power grid made fragile by renewables in jeopardy of failure. Electric car owners now might not be able to drive the high-priced vehicles Democrats demanded they buy.
On Tuesday, state officials said California faces its greatest threat of blackouts this year, with power demand likely to eclipse 51,000 megawatts setting a new high.
“As people crank up their air conditioners, the state forecasted record levels of energy use, said Elliot Mainzer, president of California Independent System Operators, which runs the state’s electrical grid,” the Associated Press reported. “The state has additional energy capacity at the moment ‘but blackouts, rolling, rotating outages are a possibility,’ Mainzer said, calling additional conservation ‘absolutely essential.’”
About 52 million people across the western U.S. were placed under a heat advisory Tuesday morning, according to Axios. Temperatures are expected to reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley and 115 degrees in the California capital of Sacramento.
The warnings Tuesday come after residents survived the continual heat wave over the holiday weekend when utility providers pled with electric car owners to refrain from charging their battery-powered vehicles.
“The top three conservation actions are to set thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights,” read an Aug.
