Do city blocks just go dark at a certain time? Is it the entire state of California or the whole West Coast? How long do they last? Don’t entire businesses shut down? Arent people looting when the power is out? Who determines where and when they take place? Doesnt it suck that you cant watch the NBA/NHL playoffs because there is no power in your home?
I live in the Midwest where gas is cheap (relatively speaking) and electricity is surging through every circuit and every transformer. What is going on over there?
Help me understand.
Gee, how nice that you live somewhere with power to spare. Oh well, I have no desire to live more than 50 miles from an ocean, so…
Yes, whole grid squares go out in sequence, hence the “rolling” part. Business can get as much as 24 hours notice, or as little as 4 minutes. Some businesses have back-up power (like hospitals), but others are out of luck. The most fun is the traffic signals at intersections, which wink out suddenly, causing all the idiots who live here to forget what the hell four-way-stop etiquette is.
These rolling blackouts typically occur during peak energy use hours, like between noon and 8:00 pm or so. There is no looting, you have been watching too many riot reruns. And we haven’t has any for a while, so my playoff viewing is not in jeopardy.
It has been a warm week so far, but everything’s ok. This weekend should be cooler and foggy in SoCal.
Yep… 2 hours per backout. It’s done on a “block by block” basis… but don’t think of it as a city block… these “blocks” are entire neighborhoods in some cases. The weirdest thing is when you are driving around and all of a sudden you hit an area where a blackout is starting and the traffic signals go out. Everyone stops and nobody is sure what to do next. It’s really weird.
Of course the rolling backouts can’t be announced in advance since that would give burglers and other baddies a chance to hit the areas where the alarm systems might be turned off etc. I don’t think they notify anyone in advance… but since I don’t own or run a business I can’t say for sure.
My company is literally next door to the police department in the city where I work and has never experienced a blackout… so some areas seem exempt from them. I love coming home and having the clocks be all screwed up day after day after day… actually we haven’t had a rolling blackout in a while. It hasn’t been that hot lately…
The city where I live had a blackout a couple of months ago, so I think we have been rotated to the bottom of the blackout list until it’s our turn again. The blackout lasted one hour.
Also, people in the same neighborhood are not necessarily on the same circuit, so while it is possible for an entire street or tract to go out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it always will. And I don’t think they knock out an entire city at once. It goes circuit by circuit.
Colleges and universities often have interruptible deals, at least with So Cal Edison; this means that they agree to power down if told to do so rather than keep everything going and paying huge fees. Sometimes they even shut the campus down and have people evacuate.
I teach at two colleges. One of them gave each faculty member a Lightstick which lasts half an hour after you break it open. Makes me feel like I’m living in a war zone, somehow.
If you have power, you can check the status at caiso.com (I think).
Or you can visit http://www.mtsac.edu (Mt. San Antonio College) and click on the energy symbol in the upper left corner to find out what’s going on and what is expected to happen.
Probably more info than anyone needed.
Certain areas definitely get “exempt” status from the rolling blackouts, like hospitals. For example, I live near the UCSF Medical center, so I’m exempt from rolling blackouts b/c I’m in the same block as them. Also, companies do get advanced warning, but not very much. I work down in Silicon Valley, and they always notify us before it happens so we can shut down our servers properly, etc.
I would just like to add that I live and work in Silicon Valley and have yet to see a blackout. I don’t know if I am in an area that is immune to them or what.
One thing that I find interesting is that when I talk to my friends and family in the Midwest (I am from Indiana, went to Purdue) they are telling me about how horrible they feel for me because I am living out here in constant fear of a blackout and paying high prices for power. But when I ask them about the power there, I find that they are paying $200, $300, even $400 a month for gas and electricity. Here, I have yet to see a bill for over $60 dollars. And that was when we actually had to use our furnace. Now that it’s warm, I expect to be paying the $30 dollar bills again.
Just a note to remind the people back home to not believe everything they hear on T.V.
Hi Pstarr. I live in San Francisco and we’ve had several blackouts. Of course, they’re always during the daytime hours and I dont think we’ve had one long enough to even let the milk in the fridge get too warm.
We had one at my workplace, it lasted one hour. I thought I would be sent home but my boss called a meeting instead.
Me personally, the blackouts are a total non-issue. I suppose some business people would disagree but maybe it helps people realize how dependednt we are on computers. Maybe its time for people to stop PRODUCING PRODUCING PRODUCING and relax for a few hours.
All this technology that nobody needs keeps getting forced down our throats to the point we “think” we cant get along without it. Blackouts prove otherwise I’m afraid…
mothman, there are two major energy providers in California: Southern California Edison, which services the LA area, and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which services Northern California. I believe San Diego has its own energy provider. I am on PG&E, so I can’t speak for SoCalEdison’s system, but there are 14 power blocks, the blackouts “roll” through them, in order. But they don’t turn off the lights for an entire block. The first blackouts, a few months ago, were in San Francisco and the South Bay, I think. I am in Block 11, and my house has yet to be blacked out. Block 11 has been blacked out, but not in my area. However, my place of work, a mile away from my home, has been blacked out twice. Blackouts usually occur for two at a time. As has been previously mentioned, police stations, hospitals, and fire departments are exempt from the blackouts. They are designated Block 55, as are the homes in the very near vicinity. One of my coworkers lives down the street from a fire department, and is exempt from the blackouts.
Gov. Davis is working with Cal ISO to give us an hour warning before a blackout, but I don’t know what’s up there - we haven’t had any in quite a while now. If you pay attention, you can tell if there are going to be blackouts anyway. They have these Power Alert Stages. It seems that we’ve been at Stage Two (BAD) for months. When they upgrade it to Stage Three, watch out. The upgrades are usually announced on the radio or as emergency updates on TV.
You may find this astonishing, but speaking as a Californian, we are not uniformly criminal anarchists. Your question is interesting though. I don’t know of any blackout related crime sprees in my area, and nobody even talks about it.
When the blackouts occur during the day, there’s probably a limited opportunity to commit a crime, anyhow.
Local police have said that there has been no crime directly attributed to a rolling blackout. The police would rather have some warning so they could get officers out to crucial intersections to direct traffic.
As for the OP,
People in California, for the most part, aren’t watching the NHL playoffs. Even when the Kings and Sharks were still playing, people weren’t watching.
People are watching the NBA playoffs. And people who live in the city of Los Angeles are in no danger of being hit by a rolling blackout because of a lack of electricity.
Hi Opal! (Is that how it’s done?)
If the power does go out during any of the events listed in #1 and #2, you can always use a battery-powered radio. We Californians are remarkably adaptable.
I live in the San Gabriel Valley (just east of downtown LA), and we’ve had exactly one blackout since this shebang started. It was at about 10:00 in the morning, and I was home at the time; it lasted almost exactly one hour. (I know that’s the only one because, save that one time, I haven’t had to reset all electrical clocks in the house.)
Also, my electric bills have not gone up in the past year by any noticeable amount. (Natural) gas bills have gone up by about 50% for me.
The school I’m at (Caltech) tells us that it can completely power itself if necessary, and assures us that the campus will not be shut down. Since we usually take our power from the grid, though, conservation measures are in place all over campus (lights dimmed, etc.).
I’m in the same valley.
Now that Mt. SAC has generators, they will probably not have to shut down; and they do what you say Cal Tech does: dim lights, shut off extra computers, etc. to keep things going.
The blackout we had was in the afternoon, like around 1pm or so.
Just comparing notes.
I live in the Central Valley, right in the middle of California. If the rolling blackouts have reappeared this summer, I was unaware, but it hasn’t been all that hot, only 90s this week. Power at the college I work at went off this winter with 30 minutes notice, but not once since.
Natural gas prices have skyrocketed! My bill was 28 dollars this month!
Looting: it never occured to me this could happen, or I’d have hit the strawberry stand up the street. Wait. They sell berries for 5 bucks a crate, not worth my while; I’ll just go and give them some more money for their perfect, golf-ball sized, red, succulent…
How much do a pound of strawberries go for in the MidWest?
Other states have blackouts. Maui had them for years mostly cause they can’t get power from anywhere else but what they can make.
Having the power go out for an hour is nothing in mid california where I am. Im sure in the midwest when they have a big storm, hurricane, tornado, you’re lucky you still have power lines
I’ve heard that alot of businesses have been hit very hard by these rolling blackouts, because they keep being forced to shut down for an hour or two, and what with start-up times afterwards, that’s a lot of productivity lost. Plus, economist-types keep saying that rolling blackouts this summer will probably cause California to go into a recession. Anyone here know how California’s businesses are fairing?
