SDGE BLAMES CAISO FOR DROPPING POWER TO 90,000 SAN DIEGO CUSTOMERS

East County News Service

September 21, 2015 (San Diego) – An estimated 90,000 San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) customers lost power for several hours on Sunday afternoon.  SDG&E tweeted at 2:02 p.m. Sunday that the California Independent Systems Organization known as CAISO ordered it to “drop 150 MW of load in our service territory at around 1:15 p.m.”  CAISO, a nonprofit, is responsible for maintaining the statewide power grid- in other words, keeping the lights on.

The outage affected San Diego and North County, not East County. But it’s raising questions. 

A call to CAISO by East County Magazine requesting an explanation has not been returned.  City News Service reported that SDG&E’s media office did not return calls during the outage and that CAISO said it was still assessing the situation and was not clear what occurred.

Power was restored later in the afternoon. The outage affected many businesses as well as homes, sending residents scrambling to find air conditioned locations amid high heat. The outage also impacted traffic signals and CHP has indicated some motorists sped through some intersections where signals were down.