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Permalink Reply by Mother of Seven on September 8, 2011 at 11:20pm

San Diego Southern California Power Outage

September 8, 2011

By admin

Lights out west in a San Diego Southern California power outage which is affecting millions of people.  This outage is even reaching parts of Arizona and Mexico after a a high-voltage line tripped, thus disrupting service.

he power loss was centered in San Diego County and Southern Orange County, but it extended to Arizona and the Mexican state of Baja California, the California Independent System Operator said. The high-voltage transmission line that tripped transports electricity from power plants in Arizona to customers in Southern California.

At a televised news conference Thursday, an official with San Diego Gas & Electric said residents in the affected areas could expect to be without power through the rest of the night and into Friday.

He urged residents to use their emergency supplies and plans.

The official emphasized that it wasn’t a terror attack, calling the outage a “system issue.” Electric-company employees were working to restore power Thursday.

Most of Southern Orange County was without power, causing major traffic congestion as the outage hit at the height of rush hour, leaving major intersections without traffic lights.

The power outage caused the San Onofre nuclear-power plant operated by Edison International’s Southern California Edison utility to automatically shut down at about 3:38 p.m. local time, SoCal Edison spokesman Paul Klein said. He said the power plant’s two units had enough off-site power to operate the plant’s safety systems, but he declined to provide details.

SoCal Edison customers in Orange and Riverside Counties were hardest hit by the outage. The utility did not have an estimate for how many customers were without electricity.

Source: Wall Street Journal

First of all, I cannot imagine what it must have been like to have to navigate through Southern California with no traffic lights at rush hour.  A few take homes and reason for more self reliance and self sufficiency.  As officials said, use your power supplies and plans, something we continue to find the general public woefully inadequate about.  Also, you have found one of the nuclear generators (on a fault line) had to go off line, offering no power due to the San Diego Southern California power outage.

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Permalink Reply by Mother of Seven on September 8, 2011 at 11:25pm

Spot News

Southern California Blackouts in San Diego, South Orange County During Heatwave

By Dennis Romero Thu., Sep. 8 2011 at 6:19 PM

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Categories: Spot News

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​Updated at the bottom with Cal ISO's explanation of what happened.

A power outage affecting all of San Diego County has been reported today, and now we're seeing tweets that the lights have gone out in Dana Point, Laguna Niguel and Mission Viejo. [Added]: The San Diego Union-Tribune now says this thing goes from Arizona to Baja Califorina to South Orange County. We're estimating that if all of San Diego and TJ are out this could potentially affect 5 million people.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune San Diego Gas & Electric is working on the outage.

South Orange County is covered by that utility and others, we believe, namely Southern California Edison.

According to the U-T, Tijuana, Tecate and Mexicali were also without power.

@B_Walker

Blackout traffic in downtown San Diego.

​

KABC 790 AM radio reports that the San Diego outage affects 200,000 people, but that could be a low number if this is a countywide blackout reaching even to Orange County and Tijuana. That's an area that covers about 5 million people.

[Added]: KNX 1070 Newsradio says San Diego has activated its Emergency Operations Center in response to the blackout. The station says it started about 3:45 p.m. and has spread to some of the Southwest. (Actually the U-T says the outages started about 3:30 p.m.).

The station notes that all Southern California air traffic is controlled by the FAA out of San Diego, which is using back-up power from a generator.

The U-T stated that flights in and out of San Diego International Airport (Lindbergh Field) were still on-schedule.

The paper reports San Diego Zoo has been closed in reaction to the outage.

Update: SDG&E tweets that the utility lost a major power connection(s) between California and Arizona and that "this could could go into tomorrow in some areas."

KNX says a line from a plant in Arizona went out, triggering the outage, which the utility says was sparked by a domino effect:

Think of the system as linked by springs, when one part goes out the rest are affected.

SDG&E says 1.4 million people are effected.

"We have two connections to the rest of the world ... both of those connections were severed," an SDG&E official told reporters during a news conference aired at KNX..

"There was no indication that this event was caused by terrorism," he said.

Update No. 2: Southern California Edison tells the Weekly it has as many as 2,000 customers without power in South Orange County and parts of Riverside County.

SCE runs the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Spokeswoman Lois Pitter Bruce told us that it went offline at 3:38 p.m. Whether that was a cause or effect for this whole thing is not known.

"Two San Onofre units to tripped offline at approximately 3:38 this afternoon," she said. "The shutdown is proceeding safely."

She adds:

"Edison is working with Cal ISO to determine the grid factors that caused the outage."

Bruce said that San Onofre is shared by Edison and SDG&E.

The L.A. Department of Water and Power says so far so good here. In fact, it tweets, the system is humming so well that it has offered excess power to San Diego:

LADWP's system has adequate capacity. We are offering assistance with excess power generation to the grid.

KNX says flights out of San Diego have been halted.

SDG&E tweets:

power could be out through the night and into tomorrow.

The outage goes from Yuma, Arizona to Ensenada, Mexico to parts of Riverside and South Orange County at this point.

[Added]: Scary tweet from SDG&E:

If you have a personal family emergency plan, please activate it now.

The utility indicated that the severing of its power trunk line from Arizona could have triggered this. It also said tweeted that the heat (e.g. folks using too much power via air conditioning) " ... could have had an impact."

Update No. 3: The California Independent System Operator issued this statement (via City News Service):

The California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO) issued a transmission emergency after a major system disturbance occurred between Arizona and Southern California and caused all of San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) and a small portion of Southern California Edison customers to lose power.

The outage was triggered after a 500-kilovolt (kV) high-voltage line from Arizona to California tripped out of service. The transmission outage cut the flow of imported power into the most southern portion of California, resulting in wide-spread outages in the region.

The ISO is coordinating with SDG&E as well as neighboring utilities including Southern California (Edison) and utilities in Arizona and Mexico, during restoration of service, which is being managed by SDG&E.

KNX says officials now estimate that more than 2 million people are effected.

[Added]: Here's what the U-T says happened:

The outage began at 3:38 p.m. when a transmission line running from Arizona to San Diego failed, triggering a cascade of events that then knocked the region's other electricity provider -- the San Onofre nuclear power plant -- offline.

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

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