Cal-ISO Moves to Stage Two Emergency At 12:30 p.m.; Investor-Owned Utilities Ask Commercial & Industrial Customers to Curtail Usage.FOLSOM, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 1, 1998--September dawned with no signs of relief after one of the hottest Augusts on record pushed California's electric transmission grid to its limits. Today's continuing heat wafting over the western states required the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) to move to a Stage Two Emergency as of 12:30 p.m. At that time the Cal-ISO requested the state's utilities to shed 1,175 megawatts of electricity in order to reduce the power demand on the state's transmission system. The Cal-ISO anticipates reaching a revised peak load of 45,600 megawatts today, a potentially record-breaking demand on the power grid since the Cal-ISO's inception in March of this year. A Stage Two Emergency is declared when operating reserves In power systems, the operating reserve is the generating capacity available to the system operator within a short interval of time to meet demand in case a generator is lost or there is another disruption to the supply. dip below 5 percent or are expected to within the next two hours. At this stage, the Cal-ISO asks the state's utilities to implement their load management programs. These programs rely on commercial and industrial customers who receive discounted electricity rates to voluntarily curtail cur·tail tr.v. cur·tailed, cur·tail·ing, cur·tails To cut short or reduce. See Synonyms at shorten. [Middle English curtailen, to restrict their electricity use in order to lower the state's demand for power. Today many utilities around the state assisted in shedding load, including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. Gas & Electric, PG&E and Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (or SCE Corp), the largest subsidiary of Edison International (NYSE: EIX), is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. It provides 11 million people with electricity. . Yesterday, the Cal-ISO declared a Stage Two Emergency at 3:05 p.m. as the state suffered under yet another lengthy heat wave. Within the Cal-ISO's control area (the region served by investor-owned utilities or 75% of the state) electricity consumption peaked at 44,339 megawatts at 3:30 p.m. Californians broke the all-time electricity consumption record in the Cal-ISO's control area on Monday, August 3, 1998 when they used 44,927 megawatts of energy at 4:11 p.m. The National Weather Service reports that Sacramento alone has encountered a total of 26 days this summer with temperatures above 100 degrees. Last summer the area saw only 14 days of triple digit A single character in a numbering system. In decimal, digits are 0 through 9. In binary, digits are 0 and 1. digit - An employee of Digital Equipment Corporation. See also VAX, VMS, PDP-10, TOPS-10, DEChead, double DECkers, field circus. heat. While not anticipated today, if an operating reserve shortfall Shortfall The amount by which the capital required to fulfill a financial obligation exceeds available capital. Notes: Shortfall risk is often combated with an efficient hedging strategy created by a fund, group, institution, or individual. of less than one-and-a-half percent is unavoidable, Stage Three is initiated. Involuntary involuntary adj. or adv. without intent, will, or choice. Participation in a crime is involuntary if forced by immediate threat to life or health of oneself or one's loved ones, and will result in dismissal or acquittal. INVOLUNTARY. curtailments of service to customers, including "rolling blackouts Rolling blackout refers to an intentionally-engineered electrical power outage, caused by insufficient available resources to meet prevailing demand for electricity. For information about accidental blackouts that are not intentionally engineered, see power outage. ," are probable during this emergency declaration. The Cal-ISO's Electrical Emergency Plan (EEP EEP Export Enhancement Program EEP Ecosystem Enhancement Program EEP Early Entrance Program (University of Washington) EEP Equal Error Protection EEP Einstein Equivalence Principle EEP Emergency Evacuation Plan ) is part of the state's enhanced reliability standards created by landmark legislation Assembly Bill 1890, which restructured California's electricity industry. Cal-ISO is chartered by the state to manage the flow of electricity along the long-distance, high-voltage power lines that make up the bulk of California's transmission system. The not-for-profit public-benefit corporation assumed the responsibility in March 1998, when California opened its energy markets to competition and mandated the investor-owned utilities turn their private transmission power lines over to the Cal-ISO's public power grid. The mission of the Cal-ISO is to safeguard the reliable delivery of electricity and ensure equal access to the state's "electron highway," which spans 124,000 miles or three-quarters of the state. The Cal-ISO is the second-largest control area in the U.S. and the fifth-largest in the world. Its computerized computerized adapted for analysis, storage and retrieval on a computer. computerized axial tomography see computed tomography. control center is located in Folsom, 22 miles from the capital city of Sacramento. -0-
Other helpful contacts:
WSCC: Kim Astin, 801/582-0353
PG&E: Leonard Anderson, 415/973-5930
SCE: Clarence Brown, 626/302-2255
SEMPRA ENERGY: Doug Kline, 619/696-4866
CONTACT: California ISO
Patrick Dorinson, 888/516-NEWS
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