BLACKOUTS LEAVE AREA SAPPED, SWEATING.

Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer

Southern California went on the blink for the second straight day Tuesday as blistering temperatures and rumbling air conditioners prompted rolling blackouts.

The one-hour outages began in the afternoon and continued into rush hour. More than 127,718 residents served by Southern California Edison were affected in such areas as Lancaster, Visalia, Thousand Oaks and San Fernando. Some areas of Northern California also were blacked out.

Stoplights went blank. Restaurant ovens went from hot to cold. Factories flickered to a halt as hundreds of thousands of Californians managed without juice.

In Thousand Oaks, an outage near the Ventura Freeway and Moorpark Road left fitness enthusiasts powerless at the Body Focus gym.

``They killed every bit of power,'' manager Rico Torres said, noting that electrically powered cardio machines were knocked out, along with the lights, phones and air conditioning.

``We're just fortunate it happened during the day or we would have had to clear the gym.''

Tuesday's blackouts were the sixth this year to place the world's seventh-largest economy into an alert. If 90-plus temperatures continue over much of the state, grid operators predict more blackouts today - and as many as one every four days this summer.

``We believe there is some conservation,'' said Dick Rosenblum, senior vice president for distribution and transmission at SoCal Edison. ``(But) on average, we're not seeing much.

``When it's hot, people are using their air conditioners.''

Power grid operators blamed this week's electricity shortage on several key nuclear plants, supplying more than 12,500 megawatts of electricity, that were shut down for service or repair. The nearly unprecedented closures equaled nearly one-third of California's peak energy demand Tuesday.

Lack of power from the drought-stricken Pacific Northwest and a number of wind, solar and co-generators out of the loop for financial reasons were also to blame, power officials said.

The California Independent System Operator on Tuesday called for blackouts to shed 400 megawatts of demand Tuesday from Northern California to San Diego, including 168 megawatts by SoCal Edison.

``The situation is due to a lack of supply in California,'' said Jim McIntosh, Cal-ISO director of grid operations. ``There is not enough electricity to secure loads at the temperatures we're seeing.''

Residents served by public utilities in Los Angeles, Burbank and Glendale, with their own municipal power supplies, have been spared any shortages. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power sold the grid more than 1,000 megawatts of surplus energy Tuesday.

Gov. Gray Davis continued his call for conservation Tuesday as he continued to blast the Bush administration's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for not instituting price controls on the runaway cost of power.

Since January, the state's botched deregulation plan has driven the largest private utilities into or close to bankruptcy and has drained nearly $7 billion from the state treasury.

``With all our progress on generation and conservation, it is a travesty that on the one issue over which the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction - wholesale energy prices - it has utterly failed to discharge its responsibility,'' Davis said in a statement.

Tuesday's outages began in one-hour shifts from 3:15 to 5 p.m. and affected 60 cities served by Edison, including Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Palm Desert, West Hollywood, Pasadena and Santa Barbara, with no reported mishaps or injuries.

In the Antelope Valley, circuits were shut down in the sparsely populated north and east sides of Lancaster without incident, according to Sheriff's Department officials.

At Coco's restaurant in Thousand Oaks, a handful of customers had just been been served when the hourlong outage hit about 3 p.m. General manager Charlie Wolf said the staff had to severely limit the restaurant's offerings for those customers who remained.

``We remained open for pie, salad and iced tea,'' he said. ``There was nothing we could do.

TUESDAY'S DEVELOPMENTS

Developments in California's energy crisis:

--California grid operators trigger a second straight day of rolling blackouts, warning that high temperatures and scarce supplies could continue all week.

--The president of the Williams Energy Co. says in a letter to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that he supports price caps ``through the summer of 2002 and no longer'' as long as generators could make a reasonable profit. Keith Bailey also says he supports Gov. Gray Davis' plan to rescue Southern California Edison by purchasing the utility's transmission lines.

--Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham says he's against any rollback in gasoline taxes or price controls on electricity despite soaring prices at the pump and blackouts in California.

--President Bush's energy task force plans to propose legislation allowing the seizure of private property to accelerate the construction of electrical power lines, three administration officials say. The recommendation is contained in the final draft of a broad energy blueprint to be unveiled by Bush next week. The ``eminent domain'' authority allows the government to appropriate private property for public use; the property owners are usually compensated.

- Associated Press

Daily News Staff Writers Cecilia Chan and Charles Bostwick also contributed to this report.

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Box: TUESDAY'S DEVELOPMENTS (See text)