Fair use for educational/research purposes only

Jan 4, 2001

Rolling blackouts may hit without warning By Michael Stoll Of the Examiner

Possible hour-long rolling blackouts, designed to prevent the state's electric power grid from crashing, could send emergency services agencies scrambling in the coming year as outages cascade from one neighborhood to the next.

Police, fire and medical units would have no more than 25 minutes -- and probably significantly less -- to dispatch personnel to guide traffic, protect vulnerable businesses from looting and get help to those whose home life-support equipment has failed.

The likelihood of "rotating outages," as power companies call them, has been high this winter due to a shortage of generating capacity and the state's increasingly voracious appetite for electricity.

And that likelihood should only grow next summer, when millions of power-hungry air conditioners kick in, state officials say.

Medical ventilators and intravenous infusion machines are of particular concern. This week Medi-Cal, the state's supplemental insurance program for the medically indigent, sent a letter to thousands of health-care providers reminding them to make sure that their patients have backup batteries, and that the power company and local fire department know where they live.

Pacific Gas & Electric has devised a computerized phone system that automatically calls everyone who is dependent on life-support technology at home if rolling blackouts are imminent.

The state came within 5 percent of its capacity of 35,000 megawatts 36 times this year, and on Nov. 7 came within 1.5 percent. The Independent System Operator, the nonprofit administrator of most of California's power grid, only averted rotating blackouts by shutting down pumps that feed water to Los Angeles.

Over the holidays the power supply got so tight that agencies began dusting off their emergency plans, saying that Californians should get used to the inconvenience of a temporary loss of power. Two plants totaling 1,000 megawatts are slated for completion in August, but that will not resolve next summer's crisis. State officials say they may have no choice but to shut down power to neighborhoods on a rotating basis.

"I think it's going to be a problem in January, because the Pacific Northwest is going to still have supply problems," said Patrick Dorinson, a spokesman for the Independent System Operator. "It's going to be a rocky time until we can get more energy into the system, and, quite frankly, next summer is going to be worse."

Most large businesses in San Francisco, spurred into action by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and a city-wide blackout in 1998, now have backup generators. Hospitals, police and fire stations, and communications equipment are exempt from the rolling blackouts. But small businesses and homes are not.

Power interruptions happen all the time; each customer in San Francisco experiences about two a year, said Jon Tremayne, a spokesman for PG&E. Problems usually only occur when large areas are affected.

On Dec. 8, 1998, at 8:17 a.m., the lights went off for several hours in San Francisco after routine maintenance by PG&E in a San Mateo substation went awry. The city nearly shut down as emergency crews dealt with non-functioning traffic lights, BART trains stalled in tunnels under the bay and stuck elevators. Traffic confusion resulted in a truck driver fatally striking a 73-year-old woman crossing Van Ness Avenue.

Rolling blackouts were designed specifically to prevent such pandemonium, emergency planners say.

"In essence what we're trying to do is unplug things to avoid a catastrophic failure," said Lucien Canton, director of San Francisco's Office of Emergency Services. "This is a very controlled thing. We'll know roughly where it's going to happen and when it's going to happen."

On days when energy looks tight, Independent System Operator analysts are watching the power supply before the morning commute gears up. This winter a Stage 2 emergency -- power reserves dipping below 5 percent -- is an almost daily occurrence.

If it looks like a Stage 3 emergency -- dipping below 1.5 percent -- is possible, Independent System Operator staff set up a 7 a.m. conference call to the state Office of Emergency Services and utilities to warn of possible rolling blackouts. Yet predicting a Stage 3 emergency is nearly as difficult as predicting a tornado, and sometimes a power failure can approach with little warning.

"We are extremely sensitive as to what a blackout can do from an economic standpoint, a safety standpoint and a psychological standpoint," Dorinson said. "When we pull the trigger we make sure that there's no more power anywhere."

If a Stage 3 is declared, the Independent System Operator tells utilities to start cutting megawatts. There are 14 "blocks" of power in the state, cut up into hundreds of randomly scattered circuits, each a few city streets wide but rarely conforming to neighborhood or even street boundaries. Stage 3 can happen in about 15 minutes, giving emergency officials at most 20 to 25 minutes to warn the public.

"It could easily be minutes, and that gives us enough time to get in touch with our people in the field," Tremayne said. "But enough of the system is remotely controlled that with a couple of clicks we could start to see relief in the system."

One rolling blackout has already been called, on June 14, and two blocks were shut down. That means Block 3 is up next.

Residents can find which block they are in by looking on their electric bill under the customer's name. Since emergency services facilities are exempt from blackouts, the small percentage of homes and businesses that share those circuits are also exempt.

PG&E has detailed maps of the circuits but does not share them even with police and fire departments. "We don't give out the information as to where the areas are," Tremayne said. "If you did that, then the less-than-sunny people in our society would figure, 'Hmm. there are no cameras or alarms at the local bank.'"

Police know generally where to go. Given the signal, the Department of Parking and Traffic will ask officers to stop writing parking tickets and proceed to key intersections, where they will direct traffic until the lights come on.

If after an hour the state is still short on juice, a second power block will be blacked out, and officers will be rushed to a new set of intersections. BART is exempt from the blackouts, but Muni is not. Its electric buses could be stranded in sections for an hour until the power comes back on.

Emergency Services would contact radio stations and wire services, which would forward the warnings to television stations. But it all would happen so fast that no one would have much of a chance to plan, least of all the public.

Gil Giarretto, a registered nurse with Arcadia Health Care, a regional home-health provider based in San Francisco, has four paraplegic patients on respirators whom he visits regularly. When he got the Medi-Cal letter on Tuesday he called fire stations and PG&E to alert them to his patients' conditions.

He also called all his patients to make sure they had enough emergency power to make it through several hours of outages. They all had battery packs, and some have either a backup supply of batteries or an electric generator.

"But not all of them do, and some are concerned about how long the gasoline will last," Giarretto said. "Some have five gallons, some have seven gallons."

Jennifer Gibson, clinical manager of continuous care at Nightingale Nursing Home Care in San Leandro, said she worries about patients whose life-support equipment is not supplied by Medi-Cal. They might not be able to afford to buy backup power on their own, she said.

And even equipment that does have backup power, which generally lasts at least eight hours, depending on the model, could pose a problem if patients do not realize that it's on.

"Most pumps let you know with a low beep that it's switched from external power to internal power, but if they're sleeping they may not hear the beep," Gibson said.

There are things that even healthy residents can do to prevent problems during a rolling blackout, said Canton of the city's Office of Emergency Services. Avoid lighting unventilated fires, stoves or gas ranges indoors for heat. Motorists should treat darkened intersections as if they were all four-way stops. They should be aware that cell phone and pager service might be interrupted because some cell towers lack backup power.

Tremayne said rolling blackouts should be fairly minor disruptions for most people.

"It's fairly easy to deal with," he said, "compared with, 'Oh my god, the city's gone black and I don't know why or for how long.' "

Customers who rely on home life-support equipment can get a computerized call warning them of an impending power outage. The toll-free number is 1-800-PGE-5000.

E-mail Michael Stoll at mstoll@sfexaminer.com

http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=blackout.12310

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 05, 2001