Skip Navigation

ESCC reports that significant progress has been made in power restoration post-Laura

September 2, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 2, 2020

The Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) on Sept. 2 reported that less than a week after Hurricane Laura slammed Louisiana and parts of Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas, electricity has been restored to approximately 737,000, or 75 percent, of customers impacted by Laura.

“Before Laura made landfall, investor-owned electric companies, public power utilities, and electric cooperatives in the storm’s path mobilized an army of at least 29,000 workers from 29 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada to respond and to restore power as quickly as possible once it was safe to do so,” ESCC noted in a news release. The workforce includes company personnel, contractors, and mutual assistance workers.

Approximately 251,000 electricity customers remain without power as of 4:00 p.m. EDT, Sept. 2, with most of these outages in communities in Louisiana that suffered a direct impact from the hurricane.

“In these areas, the storm caused catastrophic and unprecedented damage to the high-voltage transmission system, and entire sections of the energy grid must be rebuilt before power can be restored,” the ESCC said in the news release.

While distribution lines already may have been repaired, some customers will be unable to have their power restored until the transmission lines serving their communities are rebuilt and reenergized, it said.

There also will be customers who cannot be reconnected at all due to the severe damage to their homes and businesses.

“Laura was a devastating storm, and we appreciate the coordinated response to this restoration mission that is taking place across the industry and government,” said Joy Ditto, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association. “Tens of thousands of workers were mobilized quickly and are making progress in restoring power in the face of extensive damage and challenging geographic locations, as well as ensuring appropriate pandemic response measures are taken,” she said.

“Workers continue to be redeployed to the hardest-hit areas where, in many cases, both the distribution and transmission infrastructure must be completely rebuilt before power can be restored,” Ditto noted. Ditto is a member of the ESCC Steering Committee.

The ESCC continues to convene calls to discuss the restoration efforts with senior officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security and with executives from all segments of the electric power industry.

Crews are following additional protocols in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ESCC noted.

FEMA says it will limit ongoing reimbursements for PPE, cleaning supplies

September 2, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 2, 2020

The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) this week said that that after Sept. 15, it would no longer fund acquisition of personal protective equipment (PPE), cleaning materials, and other equipment unless for “qualifying emergency work.”

In addition, FEMA noted that it would move to limit the amount of stockpiling for emergencies of PPE that would be covered to a 60-day supply of PPE.

FEMA released the document, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Work Eligible for Public Assistance (Interim),” on Sept. 1.

FEMA Assistant Administrator for Recovery Keith Turi said that as of Sept. 15, PPE and other materials for non-emergency settings will be classified as “increased operating costs” for public services, and therefore will not be covered by FEMA’s public assistance program. Turi made his comments during a call with state and local officials.

The FEMA document, which is available here, includes details on what emergency protective measures (and activities related to those measures) FEMA will continue to provide public assistance.  

Public power utility looks to build on initial success with texting

September 1, 2020

From APPA News
September 1, 2020

Rock Hill Utilities, a South Carolina public power utility that began using text messages as an outage notification tool in May, is now looking at expanding its use for other functions to save time and money.

Rock Hill Utilities uses texting to automatically send outage notifications to affected customers, saving time for both the customer and the utility. Customers can also send texts to the utility to report outages. And, with the text messaging system directly connected to the utility’s outage management system, it can pinpoint the location and extent of an outage and possibly help isolate the cause and even provide data for predictive analysis.

Texting has greatly cut down on the calls that utility staff have to handle while providing quicker, more accurate communications with customers, Mike Jolly, director of utilities for Rock Hill Utilities, said. Now, when the utility declares an outage, a message is sent automatically to customers.

“We had a large outage a couple of weeks ago. In the past, we probably would have had hundreds of calls. We had two,” he said.

Customers appear to be enthusiastic as well. About 95% of customers have chosen to participate in the text service, which is provided by TextPower, a company based in San Juan Capistrano, California, that provides text messaging solutions for mission-critical applications at over 140 utilities across the country.

Almost immediately after it began using TextPower for outage notifications, Rock Hill Utilities formed a team to begin exploring what other uses the utility might perform using texting services. “I started thinking, ‘How much time and money could we save?’” Steven Varnadore, the utility’s power and communications manager, said. “It makes us more efficient and saves overtime and truck rolls.”

In June, the utility began using the texting service to send a daily inspirational message to its employees. The exploratory team is now looking at several other uses. “There has been a lot of discussion about customer service and billing,” Jolly said.

Rock Hill Utilities runs a combined utility system that provides electric, water and sewer services to about 95,000 people in the city and the surrounding area. The region has a lot of apartment buildings and a lot of people moving from one apartment to another. For the utility, that means move-ins and move-outs are frequent, Lori Thomas, operating revenue administrator for Rock Hill, said.

Texting allows the utility to push out a text message to confirm dates and locations with a greater accuracy and higher response rates. Typically, that was a function the utility did with email. “Almost everyone has a smart device in their hand, but not a laptop to check their email,” Thomas said.

Another function Rock Hill Utilities is looking at is using texting for is disconnect notices for non-payment. The utility currently uses a phone tree for those notices but reaching the customer can be difficult since land line numbers can change.

For quick and reliable communication, texting has many advantages, Mark Nielsen, TextPower’s executive chairman, said. About 59% of U.S. households no longer have a land line, instead using their cellular phone as their primary number, Nielsen says. And, compared with other forms of communication, text message response rates are high. Almost all text messages are read, and 95% are read within three minutes of being received.

Other platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are useful, says Nielsen, but only about 30% of followers see a given tweet and only 16% of Facebook followers see a given post. Most importantly, he says, the percentage of customers who follow their utility ranges from less than 1% to maybe 25%.

In addition, Nielsen points out that less than 2% of text messages are spam, so customers are less likely to ignore them than they would a phone call or email.

In part, that is because of protections built into the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which restricts the way businesses can use text messages, though there is a specific ruling by the FCC relating to utilities. Texts should relate to a utility’s service and not be used to sell a service or product (informational or emergency communications). And the utility should provide an easy way for a customer to opt out of the service, such as replying “Quit” or “Stop”.

The best way to bring customers into the service is to enroll them with an opt-out option, rather than an offer that allows them to opt in, says Varnadore, who noted Rock Hill’s high retention rate for text-enabled customers.

Varnadore has also found that texting has brought some changes to the way the utility operates.

In the past, customers would call in outages, and a dispatcher would collect the information and declare an outage. The lag time involved in using phones built in room for discrepancies to be cleared up as the process went along.

With texting, however, “we have to follow outages more closely and update restoration times more accurately,” Varnadore said. Any accidental declaration of an outage is likely to be corrected by customer feedback, he said. “It causes more precision on our end and staying up on the outage.” Nonetheless, he said, the benefits outweigh some of the changes the utility had to make.

Rock Hill Utilities is also using TextPower to send customer notices for scheduled repair and maintenance work. And the utility is exploring expanding the use of texting to enable customers to send in notices about other safety concerns, such as water or sewer leaks, and wants customers to be able to text photos as a way of better equipping repair crews to respond to problems more appropriately and accurately.

Expanding texting capabilities had been on the utility’s “road map” for quite a while but was put on hold while the utility replaced about 70,000 meters with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).

That project wrapped up about 18 months ago, and Rock Hill Utilities revisited its texting options.

Looking back, the lesson learned is “not to wait so long,” Jolly said. “I’m glad we did it. I wish we had done it earlier.”

For more information about TextPower, visit the company’s website.

EPA finalizes power plant effluent limitation guidelines

September 1, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 1, 2020

The Environmental Protection Agency on Aug. 31 issued a final rule to reconsider parts of the agency’s 2015 Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG) rule.

The agency’s final Steam Electric Reconsideration rule revises requirements for two waste streams from steam electric power plants: flue gas desulfurization (FGD) wastewater and bottom ash (BA) transport water.

Background

In 2015, EPA issued a final rule that set the first federal limits on the levels of toxic metals in wastewater that can be discharged from power plants.

The rule was subject to legal challenge and the agency received two petitions for administrative reconsideration, including one from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.

In response, EPA agreed to reconsider the ELGs for two waste streams.  

EPA’s 2020 rule contains the final revised regulations for those two waste streams.

EPA said that only those coal fired power plants that discharge bottom ash transport water or FGD wastewater may incur compliance costs under the 2020 final rule.

EPA estimates that 75 plants may incur compliance costs under the final rule, in an industry population of 914 plants.

EPA said that key changes to the 2015 rule include:

The final rule becomes effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Additional information about the final rule is available here.

MRES celebrates beginning of generation at the Red Rock Hydroelectric Project

September 2, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 2, 2020

Missouri River Energy Services (MRES) on Sept. 2 marked the beginning of hydropower generation at the Red Rock Hydroelectric Project (RRHP) in Iowa with a video dedication ceremony.

Built on the Lake Red Rock dam near Pella, Iowa, RRHP will create a new purpose for an existing Army Corps of Engineers facility completed in 1969, MRES said. MRES, a joint action agency, broke ground on the project almost exactly six years ago.

Now Iowa’s second-largest hydropower generator, the retrofitted dam will harness the power of the Des Moines River to produce electricity for thousands of homes in MRES member communities across Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

RRHP is expected to produce more than 36 megawatts of electricity, and 55 MW during summer months when water levels are typically highest. Financing for the project was provided by MRES’s partner, Western Minnesota Municipal Power Agency.

“RRHP serves as a model for public-private partnerships to retrofit some of the estimated 80,000 dams in the U.S. that do not produce power,” MRES said in a news release. The project was included in the federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard, which was designed to speed the development of critical infrastructure projects across the U.S.

“The Red Rock plant will run 24-7,” said Tom Heller, president and CEO of MRES. “It is not intermittent like wind or solar power.”

The project “will also give us another generating resource in our ongoing effort to diversify our renewable portfolio,” Heller said in the video dedication ceremony.

“What an amazing achievement to get this done,” said Joy Ditto, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association, in the video dedication ceremony. She noted that the project will provide renewable, affordable and reliable hydropower.

Ditto said that Heller was an “incredible leader to help get this done.” (Heller received the Mark Crisson Leadership and Managerial Excellence Award during APPA’s Public Power Connect: Virtual Summit & Business Meeting earlier this year).

The communities that MRES serves “were instrumental in ensuring that this project could come to fruition,” she went on to say.

“Working with their locally elected officials who manage their utilities, understanding what their community needs were going to be now and into the future, demonstrates the value of public power and the way that we can come together and ensure that our communities’ needs are being met through our electric utilities.”

The project is an example of how public power utilities listen to their communities, Ditto said.

As public power pursues innovative initiatives like electric vehicles, community solar and energy storage “we’re going to be working with our communities and our community leaders in understanding how we need to achieve those innovative activities,” she said.

Other speakers participating in the video dedication ceremony were:

To view the video dedication ceremony, click here.

Paul Lau named to succeed Arlen Orchard as CEO and general manager of SMUD

September 1, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 1, 2020

Paul Lau has been named to succeed Arlen Orchard as the CEO and general manager of California public power utility SMUD.

Lau currently serves as chief grid strategy and operations officer at SMUD and has been a member of the SMUD executive team for more than 12 years.

Lau’s appointment will be finalized at the SMUD Board of Directors’ Sept. 10 meeting. Lau would assume his new position October 3 and Orchard’s last day as CEO is October 2.

Orchard announced his retirement last fall after working at SMUD for more than 30 years.

Lau joined SMUD in 1982 as an electrical engineering student while completing his Bachelor of Science in Engineering at California State University, Sacramento and joined SMUD permanently as an assistant electrical engineer after he graduated in 1984.

lau
Paul Lau (photo courtesy of SMUD)

Lau moves to SMUD’s top post after serving as chief grid strategy and operations officer since 2015. In that capacity, he had responsibility for SMUD’s power supply and distributed energy resources strategies, including the operating strategies of SMUD’s generation, transmission and distribution systems.

Lau has been a member of SMUD’s executive leadership team since 2008 and has held a variety of c-suite roles, including overseeing customer, technology and energy delivery.

Lau serves as Vice Chair of the Large Public Power Council Emerging Trends Task Force, on the Board of Directors of the Smart Electric Power Alliance, as a Board Member of the Electric Transportation Community Development Corporation and as an Alternate Commissioner of the Balancing Authority of Northern California.

Crews from LUS, GRU and Alabama utilities deploy to Vinton, La., to help with restoration efforts

August 31, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 31, 2020

Crews from Louisiana public power utility Lafayette Utilities System (LUS), Florida public power utility Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) and Alabama public power utilities have deployed to Vinton, La., to assist with restoration efforts after Vinton was hit by Hurricane Laura last week.

The LUS crews left Lafayette Saturday morning at 6 a.m., with the trip to Vinton taking about two hours to get there, noted Alex Antonowitsch, an LUS spokesman, in an email.

LUS workers were joined by crews from GRU.

Crews are assessing the damage and assisting in restoration efforts including replacing poles and fixing lines.

Antonowitsch said that 14 workers from LUS and 11 or 12 from GRU traveled to Vinton.

He noted that there is no estimate yet in terms of how long LUS workers are expected to stay in Vinton “as we need to assess the extent of the damage. Depending on the extent, more crews may come in.”

“We have gone to help Vinton several times in the past,” said LUS Electric Operations Manager Greg Labbe’. “Once we arrive, we will assess the amount of damage and what we will need to get everyone back up with power,“ he said on Aug. 29.

Jon Hand, Executive Director for Electric Cities of Alabama, reported that crews from the public power communities of Opelika, Troy and Tuskegee have deployed to Vinton to work on distribution system rebuild.

Hand said that the total number of workers from the Alabama public power utilities is 25.

Lafayette, La., which was also hit by Laura, received mutual aid from several public power utilities last week. Crews from the City of Tallahassee, Fla., were pre-positioned in the city before the arrival of Laura.

Crews from GRU, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., Fort Pierce, Fla., Lakeland, Fla., and Jacksonville (JEA) arrived on Thursday after Laura passed through Lafayette.

Crews from Fort Pierce, Lakeland and Tallahassee are headed to Abbeville, La., Antonowitsch reported on Aug. 29, while crews from JEA is assisting investor-owned utility Cleco.

He also noted that LUS sent was sending a crew to Gueydan, La., to assist in mutual aid.

COVID-19 precautions

Antonowitsch also detailed the precautions LUS workers took to avoid potential exposure to COVID-19.

Implementing procedures were established when teams arrived in Lafayette, he noted. Operations were based out of the Cajundome, the arena for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

“All workers had to first go through a temperature gun check of the forehead, then a checklist of questions asking about potential exposure,” he said.

If the temperature was 100 or higher the worker went to a COVID staging area to wait and re-check temperature. 

There were instances of residual heat from workers sitting in a hot car that would show high temperatures when using the thermometer gun.  If the temperature didn’t go down, a rapid COVID test was available that would provide for a quick blood draw test. In addition, personal protective equipment and masks were made available to workers.

Public power crews work to restore power after Hurricane Laura makes landfall

August 27, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 27, 2020

Public power utility crews were hard at work restoring power to communities hit by Hurricane Laura, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the early morning hours of Aug. 27.

The hurricane made landfall in Louisiana with 150 mph winds and more than nine feet of storm surge “that ripped buildings to pieces, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and inundated the coastline,” the Weather Channel reported on its website.

The Department of Energy reported that as of 7:30 AM EDT, there were approximately 484,000 customer outages reported across the states of Louisiana and Texas, including approximately 386,000 customer outages in Louisiana.

Prior to the hurricane’s making landfall, crews from public power utilities across several states had already deployed or were on their way to Louisiana.

The Florida Municipal Electric Association (FMEA) on Aug. 26 reported that it had assembled public power crews from across the state to aid with power restoration efforts in Louisiana following Hurricane Laura. Approximately 25 public power personnel from Tallahassee have already arrived in Lafayette, Louisiana, and another 80 were on their way to assist Lafayette Utilities System, a public power utility, FMEA said.

Along with Florida, crews were also deployed from Missouri, Texas, Georgia and Alabama to Louisiana. Public power utilities from other states were on standby and ready to send crews if needed.

On Aug. 27, the Missouri Public Utility Alliance (MPUA) reported that more municipal utility electric line crews from two more Missouri communities were on their way to Louisiana, responding to the call for recovery help in the wake of Hurricane Laura.

Organized by MPUA, additional lineworker crews from Nixa and Rolla are on their way to Alexandria, Louisiana to assist that city in recovery from power outages.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, crews from the utilities in Hannibal, Harrisonville, Higginsville and Macon travelled to Alexandria to prepare for anticipated damage to the city’s electric system. The combined response now numbers 24 lineworkers from the six utilities.

“Our hometown utility professionals are eager to help in emergencies like this,” said MPUA mutual aid coordinator Mike Conyers. “Working together as communities and states to help our neighbors is fundamental to how our crews work.”

MPUA organized the network response from member utilities after preparedness coordinators at Alexandria called for mutual aid assistance from public power utilities. 

Lafayette Utilities System (LUS) on Aug. 27 noted in a tweet that LUS crews “have been up since early morning restoring power from downed lines.”

Texas

Meanwhile, in an interview with Public Power Daily, Russ Keene, Executive Director of the Texas Public Power Association (TPPA), reported that a total of eight municipally owned electric utilities (MOUs) that were in the track of the storm. Two of the eight MOU cities — Liberty and Livingston – were not affected.

Prior to the system making landfall, TPPA and member utilities did an effective job in terms of preparing to offer mutual aid, if needed, Keene noted.

Six cities — Hemphill, Jasper, Kirbyville, Newton, San Augustine and Timpson – were hit with power outages as a result of Laura.

TPPA’s response was slightly delayed as Internet and wireless outages during the morning of Aug. 27 created an unexpected lack of situational awareness.

The six cities are “almost in a north south line right along the Texas-Louisiana border – just inside Texas. They’re considered Deep East Texas,” Keene said.

“They were right in the middle of the forecasted path. It apparently went a little more eastward into Louisiana than thought so it therefore didn’t affect Liberty and Livingston, which are a little bit west out of that line of these other six cities,” Keene said.

With respect to the six cities, “we don’t know the extent of the damage to their city systems yet. We know that at least two transmission lines are down – one owned by Entergy and another owned by the Jasper-Newton Electric co-op,” he added.

The six cities “are all completely without power right now,” Keene said, although he noted expectations are for full restoration within 48 hours, with a key variable being how quickly the transmission lines can be repaired.

“We are learning the extent of the damage to the city systems,” he noted. “We don’t know full extent of the damage to the city systems, but we know it includes poles and wires down” in numerous locations.

He noted that New Braunfels Utilities is rolling trucks to help Hemphill “and they expect a full two-day restoration.”

Texas public power utility Kerrville Public Utility Board has dispatched crews to help Kirbyville with power restoration efforts, while another public power utility in the state — Lubbock Power & Light — has sent crews to help Newton.

In addition, the city of Seguin, Texas, is providing mutual aid to San Augustine, while Garland Power & Light is going to provide assistance to Jasper.

Keene said that APPA’s Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) “has been terrific to work with for more than a week and has been very impressive overall.”

He also noted that “we started last Friday at TPPA internally with those eight Deep East Texas members” in terms of helping them prepare.

“I think we were, in a sense, overprepared – at least from the mutual aid perspective,” he said.

Construction starts on NYPA large-scale, 20-MW energy battery storage project

August 27, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 27, 2020

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) on Aug. 26 announced the start of construction on a large-scale, 20-megawatt (MW) energy battery storage project in Northern New York, one of the largest such projects in the nation.

The facility, located in Franklin County at the top of the state, will advance progress toward achieving New York’s target to have 3,000 MW of energy storage deployed by 2030, NYPA noted.

The project is expected to be in service early next year.

The battery storage facility, which is located in Chateaugay, adjacent to an existing NYPA substation, will be the second of its kind in New York State — the only battery storage project that is New York State owned and operated.

The project will include a unique one-hour lithium-ion battery system that will help New York State meet its peak power needs by absorbing excess generation that can be discharged later, based upon the changing needs of the grid.

The NYPA Board of Trustees approved $23.8 million for the project in 2019 at its July 30 meeting. The total estimated project cost is $29.8 million, $6 million of which was initially approved by the NYPA board in October 2018.

NYPA said that increasing energy storage capabilities also helps to realize New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s climate change mitigation policies which aim to reduce the state’s carbon footprint to zero by 2040 and ensure that 70 percent of the state’s electricity supply comes from renewables by 2030. 

The work is being undertaken by O’Connell Electric Company, Inc., of Victor, N.Y. in Ontario County in the Finger Lakes region. The firm was awarded a three-year engineering, procurement and construction contract in the amount of $22.6 million by the NYPA Board of Trustees last year in a competitive bidding process.

The project’s strategic location in Northern New York is significant in encouraging efficient, reliable renewable energy growth, NYPA said.

More than 80 percent of the region’s electricity supply comes from renewable resources, including NYPA’s St. Lawrence hydropower project and more than 650 MW of local wind generation. Having the capability to store renewable energy for later delivery also will help eliminate current transmission constraints that can prevent energy from being delivered to consumers.

The energy storage system will supply the New York wholesale energy and ancillary service markets and will contribute to the reliability of the supply of electric power in New York.  

“This transformative energy storage project will enable us to integrate more renewable energy, such as hydro, wind and solar, into the New York State grid,” said Gil Quiniones, NYPA president and CEO.

“These large-scale batteries are one of the keys to growing renewables,” he said. “With these projects, we can store energy for times of high demand and give our transmission system greater flexibility and resiliency. Storing renewable energy also is critical to helping New York State meet Governor Cuomo’s aggressive clean energy targets and to fighting climate change.”

The American Public Power Association earlier this year launched the Public Power Energy Storage Tracker, a resource for association members that summarizes energy storage projects undertaken by members that are currently online.

WAPA, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation tapped hydro to help response to Calif. energy emergency

August 26, 2020

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 26, 2020

The Western Area Power Administration and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation joined forces between Aug. 14 and 19 to generate and transmit roughly 5,400 megawatt-hours in response to California’s energy emergency, the two federal agencies reported on Aug. 25.

The two federal agencies are responsible for generating, marketing and transmitting hydropower from federally owned hydroelectric dams to preference customers. In an emergency situation, the hydropower can be called upon to limit outages and stabilize the grid.

Reclamation generated the power using its fleet of federal hydroelectric dams in the West, including, among others, 18 dams in the Central Valley Project in northern California; Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona; Hoover Dam on the border of Arizona and Nevada; Morrow Point Dam in western Colorado; Davis Dam in Arizona; and Parker Dam in California.

WAPA then transmitted the energy via its high-voltage transmission system into the California Independent System Operator’s service territory, while continuing to reliably serve WAPA’s customer loads.

WAPA’s Sierra Nevada region provided more than 3,300 MWh, while the Colorado River Storage Project provided nearly 1,900 MWh and Desert Southwest provided more than 200 MWh.

 In some cases, WAPA was able to offset this generation and continue to meet its customers’ demand by increasing hydropower output from other dams to provide power to local areas. 

The agencies noted that hydroelectric dams are crucial sources of reserve energy in case of system emergencies. The large reservoirs, such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell, function as enormous batteries and can quickly dispatch a large amount of electricity on the grid.

WAPA and Reclamation have plans in place with a number of utilities to provide emergency power from federal hydroelectric powerplants.  

CAISO implemented rotating outages

On Friday, Aug. 14, CAISO declared a Stage 3 electrical emergency that lasted a little over two hours, with  rotating outages throughout the state for about the first hour. A second Stage 3 emergency was declared Saturday night for twenty minutes.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday, Aug. 17, signed an emergency proclamation to free up energy capacity.

In announcing the emergency proclamation, Newsom also said he had sent a letter to CAISO, the California Public Utilities Commission, and the California Energy Commission demanding an investigation into “the service disruptions that occurred over the weekend and the energy agencies’ failure to predict and mitigate them.”

Calling the blackouts “unacceptable and unbefitting of the nation’s largest and most innovative state,” Newsom said the agencies failed to anticipate the event and to take necessary actions to ensure reliable power supplies.

Newsom also applauded the efforts of state officials who worked to bring more energy resources online, including generation from “sources like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the California State Water Project and investor-owned utilities.”