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By Miriam Raftery
April 7, 2016 (San Diego) – Southern California, including San Diego County, could experience up to 14 days of unscheduled blackouts this summer and up to 18 days of additional outages later in the year, state officials warn. The outages could occur due to the massive gas leak at Aliso Canyon, which depleted gas reserves before the four-month leak was finally plugged.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the leak dropped reserves to just one-fifth of capacity. Adding more gas is prohibited until testing of all wells is completed to assure safety. The facility is expected to remain off-line for four more months, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Multiple state agencies have warned of the potential outages, including the California Energy Commission, California Public Utilities Commission, and California Independent System Operator.
The outages would likely be rolling, briefly affecting one region, then another. Mark Rothleder, vice president of the California Independent System Operator, says pipelines cannot transport gas quickly enough to meet demands during summer months, when electricity demand peaks.
Customers can minimize the risk of outages by conserving gas and electricity, officials have indicated. Electricity use is impacted, since some electricity in southern California is produced at gas-fired power plants.
Southern California Gas, a division of Sempra Energy, operates Aliso Canyon, located in the Porter Ranch area north of Los Angeles. The company has indicated it looks forward to “working in partnership with the responsible regulatory agencies in our shared efforts to provide a continued supply of dependable gas and electric services in the region,” according to SoCalGas spokesperson Chris Gilbride.
But Bill Powers, an advocate of the San Diego Energy District Foundation, is critical of the warnings of power shortages. “It is crying wolf for state agencies to be implying blackouts from a lack of gas, especially from a lack of gas in the summer time,” Powers has said, noting that the utility’s pipeline system has not exceeded capacity in summer for the past decade.
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