Triple-digit temperatures throughout much of California inlandfrom the Pacific Coast spurred record energy demand, promptingstate and utility officials to call for voluntary cutbacks inelectricity usage on the eve of the Labor Day holiday weekend.Collectively, August turned out to be California’s hottest ever,further testing the reliability of the new power system in thestate.As Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electricand the nation’s largest municipal utility, the City of Los AngelesDepartment of Water and Power, all registered record power demandMonday, a corresponding record for natural gas delivered toelectric generating plants was marked at Southern California Gas,which transports supplies to all three electric utilities. Gassupplies for power generation equaled 1.92 Bcf/d on Monday,surpassing a one-day record set Aug. 11, 1994 (1.877 Bcf), and aspokesperson for SoCalGas said with the prediction of more hotweather later in the week, “there is a chance we will surpass thenew record.”

The state’s grid system for the three investor-owned electricutilities, all among the nation’s largest power providers, wasseverely tested under the restructured electric industry system inCalifornia, including the state chartered not-for-profit CaliforniaIndependent System Operator (ISO) operating the transmissioninfrastructure of the three IOUs. The ISO issued both Stage One andTwo alerts Monday with 1,500 megawatts of power interrupted forcustomers who buy discounted interruptible power. It repeated atleast one of the alerts yesterday. The Stage Two was declaredbecause operating reserves of power dipped below 5% or wereexpected to do so within two hours of the alert. Stage Three,which has never been called, is when reserves drop below 1.5% andcould include rolling blackouts. Edison set a new demand peak of19,935 MW Monday, shattering the previous record of 19,118 MW set ayear earlier. This followed records for weekend power consumption(18,272 on Saturday, Aug. 29, and 17,952 on Sunday, Aug. 30). InLos Angeles, the municipal LADWP, set a new peak demand Monday of5,640 MW.

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