If You’re Reading This - Stop And Turn Off Your Computer
Or at least shut off your lights if you have windows in your office or home to provide natural illumination:
Stage 2 emergency declared for Northern California
(07-24) 14:08 PDT SACRAMENTO — California’s electricity grid operators declared a Stage Two emergency this afternoon, cutting power to large businesses that had volunteered to lower their energy use, as officials prepared for the possibility of rolling blackouts for the first time in Northern California since the 2000-2001 energy crisis.
For those of you who can turn off neither the computer, nor the lights, may we recommend you use those Ctrl+S keys even more frequently today as the chance of rolling blackouts will only increase as the afternoon temperatures continue to rise.
Please, Flex Your Power.
Wanto to know if you’ll be needing the flashlight or if you’ll get sprung early from work? Sign up for notifications from Cal-ISO here.
Flexing over here, flexing. May you not be caught in an elevator with 20 of your closest friends. See you after 7 PM…
Does this count for SMUD-served areas? The Bee this morning seemed to imply that it did not.
Good point: if you live in a MUD area - like SMUD or LA’s DWP area - your power comes from a source that is, so to speak, off the grid. That’s not to say that a big enough emergency might still not result in a loss of service to SMUD customers and our relative insulation, pun intended, is far from a license to set AC to stun.
And of course, there are areas in the greater-Sacto area not served by SMUD. If you’re served by power player PG&E, watch out, because you would definitely be affected.
There’s a few grafs of SMUD detail in this article: http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14281269p-15089463c.html
oh - and of course, heavy usage by SMUD customers combined with the bad weather could still bring down parts of SMUD service areas as well . . .